Sweethearts Ball
by epcot97
Summary: When Adrien is forbidden from going to the annual Sweethearts Ball, Chat Noir decides to crash the party instead. But when a fellow student is spurned by Marinette as her date for the dance, Hawkmoth seizes on the opportunity and forces a diabolical choice on the Miraculous Duo: save themselves, or save their classmates?
1. Sweet Mess

_Historian's Note:_

_While not required reading, these events take place a few months after those detailed in _Elegy for a Chat_ and in the gray area of time that may or may not have existed between the second and third seasons of Miraculous. As this is essentially a continuation of the universe created by that story, you might find it beneficial to review it prior to tackling this adventure._

_This story was written before the third season of Miraculous had been released in the United States; though the author attempted to avoid spoilers at all costs, they did become aware of a few plot points that were planned as part of that season but not before a substantial portion of this story had been completed. Any similarity of this tale to episode(s) that aired in the third season are purely coincidental and more due to logical intuition on the part of the author based on what had aired up to season three._

* * *

I stared at my cell phone, the screen having long since gone dark, replaying the conversation I'd just had with Father. Once again, he'd decided to insert himself into my social life "for my own safety."

"Absolutely not," he'd told me in that firm but distant way. "You have an important photo shoot scheduled for Sunday morning at the park and I need you rested and looking your best. Besides, there's no telling what mayhem might be unleashed on the city that night – I don't want you out and about if there's even a _chance _you could get caught up in any danger."

"But Father -" I tried.

"No, and that is final." He ended the connection at that point, preventing me from explaining anything.

Like, how everyone I cared about was going to be there, and that once again, Adrien would be the odd guy out with his absence. It was just one more way to prevent me from connecting with anyone. I leaned a shoulder against the wall of the school's courtyard, off in a far corner I often used when I needed a few moments alone (or, in some extreme circumstances, a place to transform in a hurry).

I smiled a bit at that. It was tempting to switch to Chat Noir and escape. But that would be a selfish move, and neither part of my personality would allow for it. Plagg made a sudden movement in my pocket, but footsteps were approaching me and he thought better of making an appearance.

There was no need for me to turn around. "Milady," I smiled.

Marinette ran a hand over my shoulder and rounded me, smiling expectantly, dressed perfectly as always and carrying her sketchbook in her arms. "I'm off to the park for a bit of inspiration," she said. "I'm trying to come up with the finishing flourishes for my Sweethearts dress." She paused, smiling slyly. "I'm open to feedback while I design it. Want to join me?"

"Would I ever," I replied a bit forlornly. "But I'm due for Fencing, I'm afraid."

She caught my wistful expression and reached out. "What's wrong?"

I put a hand on her hand. "The answer was no," I said simply. "I didn't even get a chance to tell him who I was going with."

Marinette's face lit up in shock, then anger. "That's not fair!" she said. "It's the highlight of the semester! He can't deny you that."

"As it turns out, he can," I sighed. "I'm sorry, Princess. I was looking forward to going with you and taking the next step in our public 'relationship.'"

I could see the anger hadn't completely abated from Marinette's face, and completely understood. We'd worked for months to sow the seeds to our friends and classmates that our relationship had started to evolve out of the friend zone and into something more significant; appearing at the dance together had been our long planned grand finale that would cement Marinette and Adrien as an official couple.

Not that we weren't actually already a couple. I had inadvertently discovered Ladybug's identity during a particularly bad time a few months earlier when I very nearly lost my ability to be Chat Noir – and, for that matter, the ability to even be Adrien. We'd made it through that together but not before my own secret identity had been exposed to Ladybug. Suffice it to say, once we realized that we had both actually been pining away for the other unknowingly, we'd made up for lost time – at least, as Chat Noir and Ladybug.

Paris had pretty much assumed those two were a couple anyway, so it hadn't been much of a stretch to play to our audience. But our alter egos had never gone further than being in the friend zone; having us one day walking arm-in-arm through the school would have raised a few too many red flags. Master Fu gave us a little guidance and that led to Marinette creating one of her typically over-the-top plans to get us from "friend" to "couple" in a slow but methodical way.

A few opportunities had fallen our way naturally – homework assignments that required us to work at her place or at my mansion; school outings where we were paired together. We extended it little by little, starting with a volunteering stint at the food back together over the holidays. That progressed to inviting her to help design a vest for one of my photo shoots (and thereby re-introducing her to my father), followed by shopping for a few of her elderly neighbors who just didn't get out to market as easily as they had before. Slowly but surely, we became seen together often and frequently, enough that it became natural for our schoolmates and respective families to assume we were getting ever closer to being a couple.

I put a hand under her chin. "We'll come up with a new plan," I said cheerfully. "In the meantime, it is date night. Dinner at the usual place?"

She smiled at that. "Of course."

After making sure the coast was clear, I quickly kissed her to seal the deal. "Until tonight, milady."

I watched her head out the main doors and into Paris, on her way to her favorite sketching spot. The thought of her working halfheartedly on a dress that she might not now wear tore me up enough that it was the final inducement to blow off fencing practice. I opened my shirt and Plagg flew out.

"I think we might start the evening early," I said. "Top off your appetite, my friend."

Plagg frowned. "You've gone all sappy again, haven't you." It was more an observation than a question.

"Yes," I said as I pulled out my phone and texted Nathalie.

_School work this afternoon; can't go to practice. I'll call when I'm ready for a pickup._

She replied promptly. _Okay. I'll let your father know._

As I put the phone back in my pocket, I smiled at Plagg. "That was easier than I thought."

The cat kwami smiled back at me. "You'll never be as good as me," he winked, "but not bad."

I held out my Miraculous. "Plagg, Claws out!"

A moment later, I was helicoptering my way over Paris, ensconced behind my Chat Noir persona. Not that I was a stalker per se, but it was just possible that Chat Noir had a particular perch he had come to use when he knew that Marinette was in her usual sketching location. I gently landed on the parapet that overlooked said spot and was rewarded by seeing a familiar head bent over a sketchbook, busily drafting something.

I smiled. My feline-enhanced eyes allowed me better distance vision, and I caught a glimpse of what she was sketching out. Not much, but enough to know that it was another winner in a long line of brilliant designs she had come up with. The day was pleasantly warm, with a few trace clouds and just a very gentle breeze. Owing to the hour, though, there were few pedestrians, so Marinette was essentially alone.

_Hmm, _I thought. _This kitty's feeling a bit frisky._

I leapt over the edge of the roof and, using my claws as little as possible, stealthily shimmied down the façade of the building. Marinette had her back to me and was unaware of my presence still, so I pressed myself down into a full-four-paw cat stance and snuck up behind her. Once beside her, I leaned directly into her non-drawing arm and let out a series of contented purrs.

"About time, Chat," she said with amusement. Clearly, I hadn't caught her as unguarded as I thought.

"Whatcha doing, Princess," I said as I folded myself into a sitting position beside her.

"Shouldn't you be... somewhere?" she asked, looking sideways at me.

I feigned ignorance and made a show of cleaning a paw, something that I only did in front of tourists (such as the two who had started pointing at us and taking photos). "Not till this evening, ma'am. Until then, I am free as a cat."

"I think the line is, 'free as a bird,' Chat."

"Really?" I paused, angling my head in a thoughtful way (still playing to the cameras – once a model, always a model). "I've never thought of them as free. Tasty, maybe, but have you seen the prices lately? Definitely not free."

That garnered the pencil flying off of my head. "Ow! What was that for?"

Marinette leaned over me to retrieve the pencil, and whispered in the process: "You're pushing it, kitty. These two _aren't _supposed to be a couple, remember?"

I sighed dramatically, hand across heart. "If only there some way our two worlds could align, Princess."

She sat back again and I made a show of putting my massive shock of hair between her and the image. "Chat!" she exclaimed, becoming a bit frustrated at my over-the-top cat antics. "I'm trying to work here!"

"Oooh," I said genuinely. "Now that is a dress..."

The design was all Marinette, with nary a ruffle out of place. I could see the waves of fabric in my mind, and easily visualized how it would settle on her attractive form. But it was clear she was having trouble with a little motif that was to be woven at the lower left side of the waist. She'd erased it several times already, leaving an unfortunate black smudge in its wake.

"What goes here?" I asked, using a claw to point out the smudge.

Marinette groaned. "The dress is ready, save for this last part I've been working on," she said, a trace of frustration tinging her voice. "I'd hoped Adrien could offer some advice, but he _had fencing practice_," she said, emphasizing where I should actually have been at that moment.

"Well," I said cheerily, "good thing I came along then."

She rolled her eyes. "And what would you, as a cat, know about fashion?"

"Plenty." I leaned across her lap, stretching luxuriously. "In fact, I designed this outfit myself."

Marinette tried to hide the smile that was quirking at her lips. "Including the bell?"

"Especially the bell," I said, as I regrouped on the other side of her. "In fact, it might look really good right there."

Something flashed in her face, and her eyes lit up. "You're right," she said suddenly. In a flourish, she added a stylized version of my bell to the sketch and held it out to me. "What do you think?"

It was beautifully done. "Purrfect," I said, then pouted. "Too bad I won't get to see you wear this."

Her eyes twinkled. "Never say never, kitty."

I was about to remind her about making promises she couldn't keep when we both heard screaming coming from across the plaza. My feline ears twitched and homed in on a mother and child along the edge of the river walk. The mother was waving frantically at anyone.

"I'll check it out," I said, "stay put, bugaboo."

I leapt up and started to bound across the plaza, oblivious to whatever Marinette had tried to say. The rational side of my brain kicked in and I slowed down just a bit, realizing in my haste I hadn't taken in the whole situation.

The plaza was completely empty, save for the mother-and-child combo. The mother had stopped screaming, however, and appeared to be covered in something. That was unusual enough that I slowed down further and started to crouch, baton at the ready. A split second later, I whirled the baton and fended off a spray of some sort of thick, viscous liquid. The force of it pressed me back a half step, causing me to shift the baton slightly; a glob got past me and landed over my right boot. I tried to step back again and discovered I was held fast by (I sniffed)… _caramel_?

_Oh, beautiful. Of all the times to be cutting sugar from my diet._

"Great! Do you know how long it takes to polish these?" I yelled, continuing to beat back the stream while attempting to locate the source.

The flow pointed toward me dissipated as I heard a voice cry out in glee: "A caramel kitty! And one that provides its own stick! Confiseur will turn you into a glorious creation!"

_What...? He's a candy maker? He's going to make _me_ into a candy?!_

My eyes finally landed on a tall form standing on the first set of steps leading away from the plaza; rotund and with a wild-eyed expression, he was wearing a chef's uniform splattered with a confetti rainbow of colors. One hand gripped a mixing bowl, while the other was pointing a wooden spoon at me. I watched as he dipped the spoon into the bowl, and then quickly whipped it back in my direction.

The caramel came faster than I expected and knocked the baton out of my hand; I watched helplessly as it bounced with a metallic _clang! _away from me, well out of reach. I ducked as best as I could, but was limited by how far I could rotate around my stuck boot. It was a losing battle; another glob hit my left foot and trapped me in rather uncomfortable wide stance.

"Look, Confiseur is it?" I said, yanking mightily and not making much progress at freeing either trapped foot. "I like sweets just as much as the next cat... but this is a little ridiculous."

I was rewarded with another cackle and massive stream of caramel that buried me up to my waist.

"Now would be a good time to appear, Ladybug," I sang out, looking around but not seeing my partner anywhere.

I looked back at Confiseur, who was moving steadily closer. The less movement I was able to make, the more confident he was becoming. I only had one last card to play, and past experience had taught me to be very, very careful at timing out my use of Cataclysm. While I was sure I could use it to get unstuck, that left me with no options to deal with this crazy chef.

Frantically I scanned for Ladybug again. "Really, milady, now would be a good time..."

Confiseur was now just ten yards away from me, and had dipped his spoon back into the mixing bowl. Forewarned, I reached up and began to call out: "Cata-_oomph_!"

An expertly aimed glob hit me in the face, effectively muting me, while another, my raised ring hand from the below the elbow to the wrist. For all the world I must have looked like a disco dancer frozen in time. I tried to pull my arm back but the caramel had hardened enough to immobilize it.

He was now within arm's reach of me, and the smell of sickly-sweet sugar was overwhelming. I thought about the witty things I _could_ have been saying to try and distract him while he fell for my master plan, but that seemed to be coming up short, too. Yet, Confiseur just continued to stand there, staring at me.

Normally this was the point when Hawkmoth spurred them onward to the Miraculous, so the pause was unsettling. I was able to draw my hand down into a fist, though it was anybody's guess how long I'd be able to prevent him from peeling back my fingers. And then it dawned on me: I was the fly trapped in amber, but not the main event.

_Ladies and gentlemen! It's two-for-one day in the Miraculous aisle!_

Now I understood why Ladybug hadn't appeared. If she were here (and I fervently hoped that was true) she'd likely come to the same conclusion and was mulling over how to extricate both of us. Even now, despite having worked side by side with her for as long as I had, I still tended to be the one who ran directly into the burning building before thinking through all of our options. She hadn't had to save me from myself for more than a month (that was a record!) but if I were being honest, _this_ was going to go into my permanent record.

I wriggled my tail in frustration. Then realized I had _wriggled my tail_. My back was to the sun, and it was apparently softening the caramel on that side of me. I could use that.

Carefully, so as not to draw any attention to it, I shifted my still-free arm slightly back and drew a claw along the edge of my thigh. I felt it sink into the caramel and cleanly cleave it away from my costume.

_Interesting_.

I wasn't going to be able to scratch my way out, but I thought I might just be able to back out of the cocoon around the bottom half of my body. It was working in my favor that Ladybug was absent; the longer Confiseur waited for her, the more likely I'd free myself. I tried shifting my left foot, pulling it strongly backward and then pushing it forward; on the third set, I felt it give way slightly. I repeated the action with the right foot, all the while continuing to stare down my adversary (and trying not to groan around the gagging caramel). Though it felt like hours, in a little under a minute I'd managed to wriggle myself backward a few inches; the more I moved, the looser the caramel was getting.

One final burst and I fell backward out of the cocoon, which released me with a sickening _plop!_ noise. I wasn't expecting it just then, so I landed on my back rather inelegantly, but continued into a flip to wind up in my four-paw crouch. Technically, it wound up being a three-paw crouch, since my ring hand was still stuck.

Confiseur was not amused and started back at me with his spoon.

I rolled out of his first burst and leapt around the plaza randomly, all the while heading back toward my baton. One burst nailed me on the back, but not enough to prevent movement; another nearly glued my tail to the stonework, but I managed to yank it out before the glob solidified. I started to say something snarky before realizing I was still on mute.

Pausing in the corner of the plaza, I dragged a claw across my mouth and peeled away the mess; then ran several claws over my immobilized arm, running for the baton as I did so. I'd managed to free most of it when I dove and rolled for my trusty device, nabbing it before springing it open and using it to vault toward the block wall ringing the staircase.

Surprisingly for his bulk, Confiseur was moving quickly toward my new position, ranging with caramel as he approached. I vaulted over to the opposite side of the stairway just to annoy him a bit (and, frankly, to give myself a few more seconds to come up with a plan). Where was Ladybug? Now I was starting to get worried. I scanned the plaza again, but Marinette wasn't where I'd left her.

A glob landed a foot from my still-sticky boot, refocusing my attention. The proverbial lightbulb went off, and I quickly snapped my baton into two pieces, stepped backward a half step, and hurled them toward Confiseur, catarang style. They were fast enough that he didn't have time to react, with one clobbering the spoon out of his grip and the other whacking the hand holding the bowl, releasing it to the plaza with a metallic clang.

I'd already leapt down to the stones and was sprinting toward Confiseur when the baton regrouped into a single piece and flew back to my raised hand. I had a dilemma, though. The akuma had to be in either the spoon or the bowl; I was only going to get one shot at breaking the spell, and it was literally a fifty-fifty proposition. But regardless, once I freed it (assuming I guessed correctly), I had no way to de-akumatize it. That was exclusively the province of my still missing partner.

I closed the distance rapidly and made a calculation, raising my ring hand again. "Cataclysm!" I cried, and was rewarded with that strange tingle in my hand. Confiseur had regrouped and was starting toward his cooking utensils; I leaned down and skidded across the stone, using my other hand to control my direction, feeling the sparks rise up from my claws as they gouged their pathway.

I've never been able to explain to Ladybug what it _feels_ like when I use my super power on something. But whatever it was, I felt it again as I ran my fingertips across the spoon, watching it turn several shades of black and disintegrate into dust. My skid took me beyond and toward the bowl, which I nabbed with my other hand, then jammed my toes into the stone to come to an abrupt halt.

The purple akuma fluttered up and away from the spoon.

I leapt, holding the bowl out, and rammed it down on top of the butterfly, hoping beyond hope it couldn't re-akumatize its victim with the bowl alone. I waited a breath, then two, and when I didn't immediately see anything, started to feel like my luck might be holding. I maneuvered to perch atop the bowl (no small feat, I might add), and watched with fascination as Confiseur de-akumatized into the owner of the sweet shop three blocks from Marinette's bakery. He looked a bit puzzled, as they all did.

"Where am I?" he asked as he sat up. His actual chef's outfit was splashed with colorful accents, presumably from the confections he'd been working on when he'd been caught by Hawkmoth.

"Bad day in the kitchen?" I asked pleasantly, as if it was completely ordinary for me to be chatting with him while sitting there on a metallic mixing bowl. "I've been there. You should see my toast."

"How did you know?" he replied. "Nothing I was making was turning out close to what I wanted! And to top it off, the Grand Hotel cancelled my contract to cater for the Sweetheart Ball – our shop has done it for three generations!"

The bowl jiggled under me. _Uh oh._

"Tell you what," I said. "I happen to know the mayor, and his daughter for that matter. Maybe I could put in a good word for you?" _Despite your trying to make me into a cat treat_, I didn't add.

"You'd do that?" he asked, incredulous.

"Absolutely," I said, as the bowl stopped jiggling.

He stood up and reached for my gloved hand, which he pumped furiously. I tried to keep my claws away from his palm as he said: "Thank you, oh! Thank you, Chat Noir!"

The chef wandered away from me and (presumably) back toward his shop. I smiled as he walked away, trying to look cheerful but starting to seriously worry about Ladybug's absence. I reached for the baton and clicked it into phone mode, speed dialing Ladybug. She didn't answer, but my feline ears finally picked up the telltale _zing _of her yo-yo. A moment later she dropped down beside me.

"Look what the cat dragged home," she said, forcing a cheerfulness that didn't extend to her eyes.

"Are you okay?" I asked flat out, knowing my eyes had narrowed unintentionally with the question. "What happened? I saw you were gone and leapt to the worst-"

"I'd rather not talk about it right now, Chat," she snapped. "Let's take care of business, shall we?"

"Of course, milady," I replied, automatically falling into Superhero Sidekick mode – not a zone I enjoyed inhabiting.

I rolled off of the bowl and tipped it upward, releasing the butterfly. Ladybug quickly caught it with her yo-yo and did her Miraculous thing, but at that point I'd checked out. So much so that she had to prompt me for our traditional fist pump. "Chat?"

"Uh, right. Pound it!" I said unenthusiastically, then I turned on her. "Seriously. What happened? You look like you are ready to go three more rounds with an akumatized villain."

She looked uncomfortable, to say the least. "Chat, you've got to go," she warned, as my ring chirped it's three-minute warning.

"Fine," I said, trying to hold tight to my frustration. Weren't we past this already? "But we're still on for tonight, right?"

"Yes," she said, as she leaned in to kiss my cheek. "See you then."

I extended my baton and said as I rode up into the sky, "I'll be there with a bell on."


	2. Sour Attention

I managed to sneak back into the locker room at school unseen and transformed back to Completely Ordinary Adrien, still fuming. Plagg seemed to sense my change in mood and flew directly to my satchel; I heard the telltale sounds of foil being ripped and knew he'd begun engorging himself on his supply of cheese. That quirked out a slight smile, and the disappointment I had over Ladybug _again_ keeping something from me faded slightly.

I leaned my head against the closed locker door in mute agony, hair falling forward as I did so. I really did think we'd gotten beyond this point. But what bothered me more was her seeming unconcern that I had been worried, _very _worried, about her disappearance. I viewed my primary role as her protector while I was by her side as Chat Noir; now that I thought about it, that protective tendency had started to spill over into our civilian lives, too.

Something had happened to her, and I'd not been there to help. It was natural that I wanted to make sure it didn't happen again.

_Maybe I'm not being entirely fair_, I started to think. _Whatever it had been, she _had_ ultimately arrived. I might be able to get her to talk about it tonight. _

Thinking about dinner did make me smile, and I made for the library knowing that I needed to at least put in an appearance to support my contention that I'd been doing schoolwork in lieu of going to fencing practice.

The space was deserted save for the librarian, and the resultant remainder of the afternoon dripped by slowly. I fiddled with my tablet but in truth I was already ahead on most of my assignments and had very little real work to do. It was my attempt to make sure my night job as Chat Noir didn't interfere with my education, especially since I never really knew when I was going to have to go save Paris.

My phone buzzed and it was the Gorilla texting me he was waiting out front. That was annoying, since I'd told Nathalie I'd text _them_ but also recognized it as test the test it was, fishing to see if I'd been truthful about my plans for the afternoon. After having snuck away from the mansion on more than one occasion, Father had redoubled his efforts to control my existence. I replied to the text and packed up my stuff, making for the main entrance.

The sedan was parked out front per usual, and I climbed into the rear seat without comment. Conversation with my bodyguard was never easy under the best of circumstances, and this afternoon was not counting anywhere close to that. I watched the streets of Paris roll by without really seeing them, only vaguely aware that we were going in the right direction.

_What was wrong with Ladybug?_

I was certain now that something had happened after I'd left her sketching; I was less certain if I had been the cause. That could've been why she'd been so terse with me.

_Was it something I'd said? _I thought to myself, fiddling with my phone and noting for the upteenth time the lack of messages from Marinette.

_Should I have waited for her to transform before tackling Confiseur?_ She'd never behaved like that before, and I was suddenly wracked with self-doubt. Maybe we were not as solid as I thought.

_Gahg! _I screamed silently, banging my head slowly on the window.

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that Gorilla had to clear his throat to announce our arrival at the mansion. I looked up. "Thanks," I said, and exited the limo.

Nathalie met me at the doorway. "Your father won't—"

"I know the drill, Nathalie," I said curtly, having expected it. "I'll be down for dinner shortly." I started up the grand staircase and suddenly had a thought. "Actually, I'm not all that hungry tonight. I'm going to finish my homework and hit the sack early."

She nodded. "But not before you practice your piano," she reminded me, then turned slightly away to suppress a cough.

I shrugged an assent and continued up the grand staircase to my room, carefully shutting the door behind me. Plagg popped his head out of my satchel. "What do you mean you're not hungry?" he asked, eyes wide. He poked at my (admittedly ripped) stomach. "This thing's been growling for hours."

I opened the flap further so he could fly out. "_I_ may not be hungry, but _Chat Noir_ is famished," I answered, smiling slightly.

Plagg looked relieved. "So, what will it be then tonight? I highly recommend Camembert sliders."

My stomach roiled at the thought. "Never again, Plagg."

I thumbed open my phone and starting going through online menus of some of my favorite eateries in the city, narrowed down to the few that Ladybug had also specified a preference for, found a likely candidate, and placed a to-go order for two. Fortunately, Chat Noir had talked me into opening one of those anonymous online payment systems, allowing me to pay for such niceties; Chat would then appear to pick up the pre-paid grub, no questions asked.

I smiled. Even now, it was still hard not to sometimes think of my alter-ego as another person entirely.

The last rays of sunshine were slanting across my tall bedroom windows; it was still early but I had no desire to stay cooped up any longer. My phone went into the dock, and after some reflection, I punched up _Rhapsody in Blue_ – one of the pieces I'd been working on over the last month. This version has some flubs in it (amazing what you can find on the internet), a precaution after having had my Father find an empty room last Christmas.

Plagg was chowing down the last of a complete wheel of cheese when I turned to him; he'd left the canister torn apart on the coffee table, the aluminum foil crumpled into three or four piles. "What a mess! I hope you've actually satisfied that bottomless stomach of yours?" I asked.

He nodded, mouth full.

"Where do you put it, anyway?" I teased.

In response, Plagg unwrapped the final slice from the wheel and downed it in one gulp.

Feeling a little of my good humor from earlier in the day returning, I laughed as I held out my ring. "Plagg - claws out!"

The Miraculous transformation enveloped me in its green flash; I closed my eyes for once and felt how the magic washed itself over me in a slightly electric tingle, from head to toe. I could _feel_ my costume as it replaced my street clothes, which I'd never realized before; then the ears, then the mask, and finally the _snap! _sensation when my tail appeared. I waited an extra beat after the final sensation had faded away before opening my masked eyes and found myself switching mentally to Chat Noir for the second time that day.

After doublechecking the audio on the phone was still playing, I leapt out the bedroom window into a somersault bounce off the fence, and the up and into the Paris evening, helicoptering my way toward the first rooftop, where I gently dropped to the tile. I had plenty of time, so I stashed the baton at the small of my back and started jogging at a gentle pace across the skyline of the city, pausing only when I needed to leap across the odd alleyway in order to continue my way to the first destination of the evening.

For some reason, Italian had appealed to me tonight, possibly in an effort to reload the carbs I'd lost fighting Confiseur. In truth, my metabolism had shifted into overdrive since becoming the Miraculous Cat holder: like any teenager, I was hungry all the time, but it had become a thousand percent worse with my night life as Chat Noir. On the plus side, the better-defined physique that came with the gig appeared to stay put when I was _not_ Chat Noir, which had the potential to be handy for my modelling career. I'd lately been trying to explain it away with my after-school athletics, though anyone who knew anything about fencing was likely to get a bit suspicious.

I came to the end of the roof I was running along and paused at the edge briefly before swinging around to a downspout on the corner of the building, which I caught with one hand. It redirected me ninety degrees and I landed in a cat crouch along a ledge directly over Philippe's Italian Bistro. The wondrous smells drifting through the main entrance were divine under normal circumstances; with my enhanced feline senses, I could easily tell that Philippe himself was in the kitchen owing to the liberal addition of garlic in everything. A smile grew beneath my mask; as Adrien, I had often ordered home delivery directly from the bistro on nights when Father had been travelling and I'd given our chef the night off.

As Chat Noir, I had dropped in multiple times to grab some of the glorious wares after a long night of fighting back Paris's villains. I'd even grabbed a full three-course meal on the several occasions I'd invited Ladybug to dinner on my favorite rooftop, only to pick at it halfheartedly after being stood up.

But that was before, during what I now jokingly called our dark ages.

These days, we tended to reserve one night a week for "date night" and I'd used Philippe's a few times since when it was my turn to pick up dinner. Of course, that presumed that Hawkmoth didn't decide to throw the city into chaos just as we settled down to munch. Tonight happened to be our rotating night, and I was really hoping a slice of Philippe's lasagna would tempt Ladybug to tell me what happened to her out there on the plaza.

I crept along the ledge, careful to keep out of the sightline of the patrons eating in the open-air café portion of the restaurant. At the edge of the ledge, I executed a double flip off the end and landed outside the kitchen door, upon which I rapped with one knuckle.

The door flew open exuberantly, and Philippe himself was at the door. He was extremely skinny, which I felt was odd for a chef, but full of a wiry energy that I always found infectious. His pencil-thin moustache quirked when he saw me. "Chat Noir!" he cried as he rushed through the door and embraced me with gusto. "What brings you to my door this evening?!"

"I'm picking up an order for two," I said as I tried to disentangle myself from his embrace. We'd saved his daughter during the nightmare that Hawkmoth had unleashed on Paris during Hero's Day. "Number 7-4-8-1-2 I think?"

"Ahhh," he said knowingly, clapping his hands together. "My lovebird _speciale_!" He winked. "Or should I say love_bug _special!"

"Hah hah hah," I laughed. Kind of. He used the same joke each time I appeared.

_Every. Single. Time._

"Now you wait right there while I get it boxed up, _capito_?" He paused, then thoughtfully added: "You want something while you wait? Italian soda? Warm milk?"

_Eeew. Who drinks that? Not _this_ cat! _"No, Philippe," I said, "but thanks, though."

I watched from the doorway, flicking my tail, as he bustled through his kitchen, weaving around his staff who apparently saw a full-grown black cat in their kitchen every night and thought nothing of it. I smiled. I guess Chat Noir was no longer a man of mystery in Paris. From what I could tell, it was a fairly busy Thursday evening. Orders were lined up as far as I could see on the board, and multiple steaming dishes awaited their waitstaff. I could feel my stomach rumble.

At length, Philippe reappeared with a massive paper bag brimming with my order. I glanced in and noted a small box of cannoli had been perched atop the salad. I cocked a masked eyebrow. "I'm pretty certain I didn't order those," I said.

"On the house," he smiled. "Besides, what lady can resist _dessert dolce_?"

_Definitely not Ladybug,_ I thought. "Thanks, Philippe."

"Come back soon, Chat Noir! Now, don't keep your lady waiting," he chided as he pushed me back out into the night.

I laughed again, this time with feeling, and waved with my free hand as I sprung up to the ledge, and leapt again to the roof. This was always the tricky part: getting the food back to our rendezvous without spilling so much as a noodle. I had a close call crossing one particular alleyway, but managed to get to my overlook across from Notre Dame with dinner intact and twenty minutes to spare.

Setting the bag down, I crossed over to where the roof of this building met the higher wall of the next, snuck out a loose granite tile, and retrieved my cache of romantic accoutrement. I was well practiced by now, and in just a few minutes had laid out and lit all of my candles along the edge of the wrought iron railing, trailed rose petals along the roof tiles, and set out two place settings atop a white tablecloth I'd borrowed from the mansion.

I was getting ready to put out the food when my feline ears caught the approach of Ladybug. I stood up and turned toward the direction of her approach, tensed, and with an audible "Meow!" leapt into midair to tackle her before she landed. We tumbled together to the tile, my arms carefully but snugly wrapped around her.

Her yo-yo fell from the sky, bouncing across the tile behind us.

"Hey!" she said, not unkindly, after I'd moved in for a quick kiss. "I wasn't in need of rescuing just then."

"Says you," I replied, as I rolled off her and into my patented patient cat stance. "My feline senses are picking up a definite negative aura that only Philippe's five-star lasagna can dissipate."

"Oh my _God_, Chat," she said. "That is _exactly _what I need." Her blue eyes turned to me, expectantly. "You didn't happen to get—"

"Cannoli? No," I said. "But Philippe seemed to be on your wavelength so…" I reached into the bag and pulled out the small box.

Ladybug leapt over me and grabbed the box. "These are mine!" she declared.

"Careful, LB," I chided, waggling a claw at her. "Emotions like that are likely to garner you an akuma."

"It would be worth it," she cried, tearing at the box and demolishing three quarters of a pastry in one bite.

I felt my eyes widen in alarm. "Milady?" I said. "Uh, those were for dessert…"

She turned back toward me, dusting crumbs from her face. "I'm sorry, Chat. It's just been that kind of week, from your Father's stupidity to…" she paused, her face turning red. "Well. To that fiasco in the plaza." Ladybug popped the last of the cannoli into her mouth and settled in at her traditional spot to my left at the tablecloth.

I started to pull the dishes out of the hotpack Phillipe had provided, then placed the Caesar salad between us, with the small bag of freshly baked rolls to the side. "It will help to talk about it," I said, as I tried unsuccessfully to grab a roll without snaring a claw. "I'm not afraid to admit your absence had me sick with worry." I narrowed my eyes. "This wasn't some sort of sidekick test, was it? I thought we'd already settled that."

Ladybug demurely nibbled at a piece of romaine. "Nothing quite like that," she sighed, looking at me with clear worry in her eyes. "I don't want you to be upset," she started.

"That's not a great way to start," I chuckled, trying to make light for her sake as I peeled open the takeaway container of lasagna. My claws made short work of the tape that had sealed it, and I carefully repeated my efforts on Ladybug's container before handing it to her.

She sighed again, and I caught her hand. "You know me. I can't be mad at you."

_That_ succeeding in making her laugh. "Liar."

I had the good sense to accept the criticism. "Well, all right, maybe I _can_ but it never lasts."

"Once you see reason," she prompted.

"Once I see reason," I agreed, smiling. I spied the open box of cannoli and with lighting fast feline reflexes snapped it away from her and leapt to the railing. "Spill it or these hit the street," I threatened, dangling the box dangerously over the edge.

To my surprise, she started laughing so hard she nearly fell over. "Chat!" she guffawed. "You'd make a terrible villain..."

"What...?" I said, confused, my feline ears flattening at the comment. Then it hit me – the box was lighter than it should have been. I upended it and watched a stray flake of pastry gently waft out and toward the street below.

My eyes went wide. "You ate _all _of them?"

She laughed harder. "No, silly cat, I plated them for later," she said, tears rolling down her face as she pointed to the stack of cannoli just to the side of the bread. I'd been so focused on her I'd missed the effort.

Still, it had broken the mood and she looked more relaxed than when she'd first arrived. I feigned annoyance at being outplayed when in reality I was just happy to see her smiling again.

Rejoining her at the tablecloth, I let a comfortable silence develop as we dug into the fabulous meal. As I'd expected, the multi-layer pasta was a little too garlicky for my own tastes, but that was a very minor complaint. The noodles were perfectly cooked, the meat sauce had just the right tanginess, and the cheese was extraordinarily rich. I had nearly polished off my slice and was eyeing what was left of Ladybug's plate when she finally started to speak.

"You know Michael?" she asked without looking up from her plate.

"The quiet guy in the back?" I responded. "Short, tousled brown hair? Favors hoodies and skinny jeans? Nope."

This _was _my first relationship, so I will freely admit that I was still insecure enough to think Ladybug/Marinette might get away from me despite my best efforts. I'd therefore made it my business to keep track of anyone who might vaguely have been on Marinette's radar, and this guy had been hounding her for weeks about going to the Sweethearts Ball. She'd been gently rebuffing him.

"Well, when you did your usual stunt and took off at the plaza-"

"Now wait just a minute-!"

"-I'd grabbed my stuff and was booking it for a quiet corner so I could transform and join you. Unfortunately, the first turn I made, I ran right into Michael. As it turns out, you're not the only one stalking me. He'd been watching us."

Something cold jumped down my spine. Possibly jealousy, but more likely my natural protective streak when it came to My Lady. I tamped down a response by snagging another roll and munching.

"I tried to get around him, but he insisted on asking _one more time_ if I would go to the dance with him." I could hear some frustration in her voice, so I continued to munch, making the assumption that it would be best for me not to say anything unless asked.

"Admittedly, I was in a hurry to get out to the action; I tried to move it along, but he actually went down on a knee and had a rose and everything."

My eyes widened. "He stole my move!" I couldn't help but exclaim.

Ladybug glared at me and I stifled more commentary. "It was very sweet, of course, but I had to firmly tell him I had other plans." She frowned. "It didn't go well, but not for the reason you might think."

I raised a masked eyebrow.

She sighed again. "He's not blind to the Adrien-Marinette progress we've been making; when I said 'no' again today, he grew pretty angry and let slip that he thought Adrien was being pretty insensitive by backing out at the last minute – something he made a point of saying he would _never_ have done." She paused. "But the final straw, apparently, was seeing Chat Noir flirting with me today."

"Flirting? Me?" I said innocently as the other eyebrow went up. "I guess it didn't help that I showed up at the plaza, did it?"

"Nope," she concurred. "In fact, your antics cemented in his mind that Chat had been angling for my affections, and to his eye, it looked like I was being receptive to Chat's advances while seeming to spurn his – especially since he had photos, not just at the plaza. Apparently Chat Noir has been hitting on me for some time now."

I smacked my paw to my forehead; in a way, his observation happened to be the truth, just not in the way he assumed he'd seen it. "This complicates matters. I've been so careful to prevent people from making the connection between Adrien and Chat Noir, I've not considered how people would interpret all the time Chat Noir has spent with Marinette." I paused. "Oh my God, what do your parents think? I'm there all the time."

Ladybug smiled. "My parents are a little more open minded, but yes, Chat Noir has made quite the impression on them. Fortunately, the increased amount of time you've been spending there as Adrien has made it a moot discussion." She smiled slightly. "Actually, _they_ think I am playing one against the other." She winked.

"Good to know," I said.

"Anyway, I could hear you were having trouble in the plaza -"

"Hey! I had it under control!"

"- so I wound up getting a little firmer than usual and told him on no uncertain terms that I wouldn't be going at all. With anyone." Ladybug looked awful. "I know it hurt him, badly, but I didn't wait to see his reaction and wound up running three blocks away to finally find a quiet place to transform."

I moved over to her side and wrapped my arm around her to pull her close. "You couldn't hurt anyone intentionally, bugaboo. I'm sure it will be painful for a bit, but he'll get over it."

_Like it was for me, for a while, _I thought to myself. There had been a time when my world had been crushed out of existence by a chance comment from Ladybug; I knew she hadn't intentionally planned on hurting me, but like Michael, she'd been trying to tell me for months that there had been someone else.

Fortunately for me, my alter ego happened to be the "someone else." No such luck for Michael.

"On the plus side, he hasn't appeared as an akumatized villain yet," I said helpfully. "That has to be good, right?"

She sighed, not convinced. "You know the rest from there. He delayed me so long that I arrived after you'd released the akuma spell; I actually don't know how long you'd been balancing on that bowl."

"Longer than I wanted to," I said. "But I knew you'd arrive, sooner or later." I decided not to share with her how I had _really_ felt at that moment, sitting on an active akuma.

I hugged her again. "How about this," I suggested. "Maybe Adrien can talk to him tomorrow at school, and point him toward another opportunity. I happen to know that Olivia is still waiting to be asked."

Ladybug looked surprised. "Really? I thought Paul was taking her."

"He's off for a soccer tournament in Barcelona of all places."

She looked thoughtful. "They _would _make a cute couple," she concluded. She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. "Brilliant, Chat. That might just work."

"Not just another purrfect face," I said, burying my chin in her hair affectionately.

I had my doubts, but it was worth a shot.

* * *

**AN: As you may have noticed, these sections are longer than what I've posted in the past. Unfortunately, that means it's taking me a tad longer to edit each section, so it looks like it will be one to two days between chapters. Thanks in advance for being patient! **


	3. Promises Kept

Fortunately, Hawkmoth gave us our date night for once. After blowing out all of my candles, Ladybug helped me pack away everything into my hidden nook and together we placed the empty food containers back into the carryout from Phillippe's. It was still fairly early, and neither of us really wanted to call it an evening. I was leaning on the railing facing the river, and she was next to me, arm around my waist, head nestled into my chest. I had my arm draped over her shoulder, claws carefully pointed away from her costume.

"I see why you like this spot," she murmured, watching the lights from Notre Dame reflect on the ripples in the river.

"It's always better with you, of course," I sighed as I scanned the horizon, an automatic action given my profession. My eyes passed over the Grand Hotel in the process.

"Oh – oh, crud," I said.

She sat up against me. "What is it, Chat?"

"I totally spaced. I told the chef that had been akumatized I'd talk to the Mayor about getting his gig back for the Sweethearts Ball." I popped open my baton to check the time. "I might as well do it now since it's so quiet." I looked at her. "Want to come with? Maybe the two of us will convince him faster."

I saw a shudder ripple across her face. "Does it mean talking with Chloe?"

"Not unless we have to," I said. "But Chat Noir can handle her," I winked.

"Right," she said, unconvinced. "Hotel or City Hall?"

"At this hour, Hotel for cocktail hour."

"And it the evening was going so well, too," she sighed. "Okay, let's get this over with."

We diverted back to Phillipe's so I could return the hotpack, and then off to the Grand Hotel. I wasn't feeling any more enthusiastic than she was, but a promise was a promise, and the Mayor certainly owed us a solid. I'd lost count how many times we'd saved Paris now, so least he could do was give this chef another shot.

Or so I hoped.

By unspoken agreement, we landed on the roof of the ostentatious hotel. At that late hour, no one was using the pool or cabanas, so we arrived unobserved and were able to enter the stairwell that gave access to the main hallway outside of the five-star lounge.

I slid the door open slightly to check the traffic, which was heavier than I would have expected for the odd Thursday. Well-dressed patrons were hurrying away from the main parlor, and even some of the staff were, too. "Something's going on," I whispered. "This might not be the best night –"

My ears flattened, and I grabbed Ladybug and leapt to the side of the landing, just as the door blew into a million bits of wood. We tumbled into our fighting crouches, and I had unconsciously already gotten my baton into my hand, with Ladybug safely behind me. "What is that hideous smell?" I asked.

As it turns out, it was Hawkmoth's date night gift us: an organically shaped akumatized individual poked what for all the word looked like a sagging, wilting, moldy grape vine-draped head into the stairway, grape-shaped beady eyes scanning the space. The odor appeared to be coming from the visible fermentation taking place all over the body of the creature, a body that literally wreathed with wiggling vines loaded with fruit... and conveniently accessorized with two arm-mounted cannons of some sort, one of which was slowly turning in our direction.

"Up or down!" I quickly asked.

"Down!" Ladybug cried.

I grabbed her around the waist and hurled us over the railing and into the center of the stairwell, narrowly avoiding a blast of what could only be described as vinegary wine that blew hole in the wall we had been huddled against, exposing the adjoining dining room. We fell swiftly toward the ground floor, the railings flashing past us in a blur.

"Hang on!" I yelled, my words dopplering as we fell. Ladybug tightened her arm around my waist, and wrapped her other over my shoulder. I triggered the baton and held in front of my falling face with my free hand, and it sprung wide and hooked itself across the atrium of the stairwell at a slight angle. Using my downward momentum, I rotated around the baton one-handed, and then timed it to shrink just as we were arcing back up the stairwell. Ladybug released herself and we separated just as we cleared the railing of the last landing we'd passed, both of us twisting to tumble and roll-out into side-by-side crouches.

Aside from feeling like my shoulder was going to pop out, I'd managed to keep both of us from splattering on the ground fifty feet further on. "Okay?" I asked as we took a moment to breath.

"Yeah," Ladybug answered.

"And we thought it was going to be a quiet evening," I said mirthlessly.

"Actually, it's lucky you remembered you had to get here," she reminded me. "We'll be able to contain the situation to the hotel now."

We both looked upward. Vinehead was staring down at us, arm cannons coming up and over the railing.

"Time to go!" I said.

A torrent of acrid smelling wine poured down the staircase's atrium, almost rain forest-esque in its density; a second wave had rounded the steps on the level above and started to wash down toward our position on the landing. Ladybug leapt down the next flight, hopscotched around the corner and repeated the jump to the lower level; I bounded behind her as close as was safe.

"Is it following us?" she asked as we repeated the move a second, and then a third time, with the purple-colored fluid close on our heels.

"Maybe," I said as I chanced a look over my shoulder. I thought I could hear it slushing its way down the steps toward us but the cacophony of the cascading liquid was making it hard even for my feline hearing. I reversed my angle and noted the lowest level had become a swimming pool, effectively blocking us from getting to the ground floor exit. "I think we have a problem, milady," I said as we leapt to the last landing above the acrid lake.

"Maybe not," she said, and she pressed through the door onto the second floor. "We need to get to the main lobby, and can access the grand staircase from this level. There's more space for us to work with there anyway."

"How are we going to get it to follow -" I started, just as we both heard a soggy _ploink!_ behind the door. My feline reflexes yanked Ladybug out of the way just as the door we'd recently come through exploded outward, and Vinehead made its appearance.

As a result of the explosion, I was now covered in the acrid liquid; my costume was offering some modicum of protection, but I could feel a stinging, burning sensation around the exposed sections of my face. We scrambled away from the creature and scampered down the hallway, which opened into the mezzanine level overlooking the lobby. The massive marble staircase was just ahead of us; I skidded to a stop on the now slick flooring just at the top, and turned around, baton at the ready.

I managed to spin it up into shield mode a fraction of an instant before another wave of grape-colored liquid hit us, diverting it away and protecting Ladybug while she called up her Lucky Charm. The force of the blast pushed me back slightly, and I could feel the edge of my boot heel start to skid out and over the top step of the staircase.

"What did you get...?" I started to ask, turning slightly to see what her spell had brought her.

It was but a momentary distraction, but enough that Vinehead managed to sneak a tendril below my shield and around my ankle. It yanked and I went down in surprise, though somehow managed to hang on to my baton. I landed on my back, hard, and with the wind knocked out of me, had no time to prepare for the multiple tendrils that appeared and deftly wrapped themselves around my lower body; in seconds, they'd spun up and pinned my arms to my torso. "Lady-!" I tried to get out, only to have a thick strand start to squeeze around my throat.

For the second time in two days, I found my ability to speak removed completely, and it was starting to _really _piss me off. I gurgled something that wasn't remotely close to Cataclysm as I flexed as hard as I could against the vines. They responded by squeezing even tighter; I could feel the last of the air in my lungs whistle out against my control, blackness creeping in at the edges of my vision.

This was getting serious.

I'd lost track of Ladybug, and could feel that I was being dragged toward Vinehead and the obligatory removal of my Miraculous, though for the moment, my ring was buried beneath the vines. Of course, once I blacked out, it would be easy to pull it off. Stars now ringed my vision, and I wasn't entirely sure how much longer I'd remain alert. Somewhat frantically, I started tossing ideas around before realizing I could still feel my baton in my hand.

_Interesting_.

My fingers were numb from the pressure of the vines, making it hard to feel for the magic Paw Print. Assuming I was really lucky today... _there!_

With a metallic clang and the violent tearing of flora, the baton elongated to pole vault size, shredding the vines that had wrapped around me. Gasping, I rolled away from the mess, using my claws to remove the stragglers, slipping multiple times on the slick granite flooring before dropping to all fours and literally scratching my way out of danger. Breathing hard, I circled the mezzanine; it took everything I had left at that moment to leap up to the balustrade and then over to one of the massive chandeliers overhanging the space.

The light swayed ominously after I landed, but held. Still gasping, I scanned the space for My Lady. "LB?" I called, my voice hoarse and cracking. "Where are you?"

"Here!" she replied from behind me. I leaned around the pole I was clinging to and saw that she, too, was in a chandelier not more than five meters away from me. She was holding her Lucky Charm, which appeared to be some sort of plant sprayer. "Great minds," she laughed ruefully. "I'd already gotten up here when that thing nabbed you. Good work getting free."

"Thanks, I think." I gestured to the sprayer. "What's the plan?"

"We need to get it down to the main floor," she said. "I don't think we'll need Cataclysm to do it, so hold that in reserve for now, but I need you to, uh, act as bait."

I groaned. "I just got _away_ from it," I mewled. "You are going to have to soothe me when we get out of this."

"Count on it," she winked. "Now, down, kitty."

I turned back and Vinehead was still standing at the top of the staircase, possibly trying to decide how to proceed. I wasn't at one-hundred percent yet, but for Ladybug's sake, kept up appearances. "Well, friend," I said as I rolled over the edge and dropped to the floor below, baton ready. "Ready for another round? I think the cat took the first one – best two out of three?"

I carefully bounded up the stairs, pausing halfway and extended my staff so I could pop it on the head. "Tag!" I cried gleefully and then somersaulted multiple times back to the main level. At the bottom, I looked back and saw it had started to lumber toward me, cannons pointing in my direction. Bounding right, I skipped over the violet stream and vaulted onto one of the coffee tables, knocking over a floral arrangement in the process.

_Hmm._

I leapt over to another table, and kicked the flowers off that one, too. "Ooops!" I said. "Bad Kitty!"

It was close now, and the fumes were making my eyes water. I extended the staff again and hurriedly vaulted over Vinehead, narrowly avoiding being nabbed by one of those pesky vines as I did so. It turned again, and this time nailed me in the back with a targeted burst of the acrid fluid, pushing me into the mirrored wall opposite the concierge desk. The mirror shattered when I hit it, and to my surprise, my costume shredded in a few places, exposing bleeding cuts from the glass.

"Wow," I said as I sprung away again, trying to ignore the stinging and wondering why my costume had failed. That was a first. "Broken mirrors and black cats, that's not a great combination!" I circled it again, noting that it was nearly where Ladybug needed it.

_Just a little nudge..._

One last time, I extended the baton and tapped it. That was enough – it lunged at me, extended both cannons and enough vines that if I were any closer, I'd have been crushed immediately. Ladybug took that moment to liberally douse Vinehead with whatever was in the gizmo; that stopped it in its tracks

While it didn't appear to be able to be vocal, the wildly flailing vines and "arms" told us it was not a pleasant experience. But slowly, in front of our eyes, the vines wilted away and faded, as did the grapes and other flora draped across the form.

"Look for anything that might hold the akuma!" Ladybug cried as she continued to spray.

After the first, and perhaps second layer of biological material had faded away, more of a human form began to become apparent. I'm not sure why I thought what I thought, but I pointed at what looked like one of those mini-chalkboards waiters often carry at high end restaurants – the ones where menus changed nightly, or special wines were being paired. "That!" I said.

"I think you're right," she agreed. "Take it out!"

I raised my hand. "Cataclysm!" I yelled, immediately feeling the power rush to my hand. I hesitated a second and then rushed in, brushing my hand against the chalkboard. I was rewarded by seeing it blacken and turn to dust, releasing our now familiar purple akuma.

Vinehead dropped to the floor as the purple wave receded, revealing a thin, balding man dressed in the uniform of those who worked for the hotel. I knelt beside him, consoling as I heard Ladybug complete her de-evilizing magic. "It's all right," I said. "We're through it. Take a deep breath."

"Miraculous Ladybug!"

Her little helpers burst into life and swarmed through the space, restoring the damage wreaked by Vinehead. I felt a slight electrical thrill as they surrounded me as well, repairing the acid burns on my face and the cuts from the glass; my costume also restored itself back to normal.

Once the light faded, I could see a small whiteboard with a large black smudge was by the hands of the worker, though if I squinted, I could see that it had been the premier wine list from the lounge. So, this was the sommelier from the restaurant. "Wow," I said. "Was it the price or the vintage?"

"Both," he said sadly as he sat up. "I've recommended wine to heads of state and famous people from all of the world. But that… that… woman!" His voice shook and I gently patted him again.

"It's over," I said, calmly, as Ladybug sat down next to us. I met her glance. We knew exactly who he was talking about: Audrey Bourgeois. "Now, why don't you call it a night? We'll see if we can't straighten this out for you."

"All right," he said, despondently. He stood, slowly, and headed for the main entrance.

People had started to fill the lobby, and mindful of my now-chirping ring, I scanned the crowd. As I suspected, Mayor Bourgeois was glad-handing his way down the grand staircase toward our position. I straightened up and Ladybug stepped in beside me.

Her earrings chirped and I caught she had two dots left. "Cutting it close, milady," I whispered. "I can handle this if you want to bug out."

My ring took that moment to chirp it's four minute warning and she replied: "I could say the same. But a promise is a promise."

"Ahhhh!" the Mayor said, grandly, as he approached, grasping my hand. "The heroes of Paris have done it again! Thank you, thank you, Chat Noir and Ladybug for restoring order and saving my guests…!"

_Wait for it… wait for it…_

"… if there's anything I could do for you in return -" he said, smiling the political smile that had kept him in office for as long as any of us could remember.

"As a matter of fact," I said, smiling down at Ladybug. "There _is _a little something you could do for us…"


	4. Swap Your Partner

I returned well after midnight to my room at the mansion, thoroughly exhausted. We'd had to skip out from the hotel shortly after extracting a promise from Mayor Bourgeois that he would re-hire the confectioner for the Sweethearts Ball on Saturday, and barely made it to an alleyway before transforming back to our alter-egos. It was way too far for us to walk home, though, so after recharging our respective kwamis, we re-transformed and headed our separate ways for the evening – but not before savoring one last goodnight kiss.

I crept into my bedroom and used my night vision to scramble under the covers, sighing at the comfortable mattress and the caress of the non-down pillow (allergic to feathers, remember?). I'd nearly dropped into a deep sleep before bolting upright at the realization I was still Chat Noir.

"Plagg – claws in!"

The green glow descended upon me and Plagg fluttered away, muttering something about cheese. I assumed he'd raid his stash and rejoin me in the morning. Still too tired to think, I simply sank back into the bed and zonked completely out, oblivious that I was still in street clothes.

I bolted upright when the shrill alarm went off, forgetting who I was at that moment and finding myself crouched on the pillowtop, claws out. Except there were no claws; I relaxed slightly and ran a hand through my hair, and though it was seriously tousled, feline ears were not present, further confirming I was simply a very tired Adrien. It wasn't the first time I'd awoken like that, making me wonder if I was blurring the lines between my two lives just a little too much.

Ignoring the blaring alarm wasn't really an option, knowing that Nathalie would be on its heels. Grumpily I rolled out of bed and into my bathroom, ran through the shower and dressed almost on automatic. I arrived at breakfast on time, surprised Nathalie by clearing almost everything off the buffet (it had been a long night, after all), and at length found myself back at school a few minutes before first bell.

Marinette looked as bad as I felt when I found her in the courtyard, though my heart ticked up a beat or two as it always did when her amazing face turned in my direction. "Milady," I said quietly in case one of our gaggle of friends were within hearing distance. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look terrible."

She smiled, tiredly. "You really know how to sweet talk a lady, don't you kitty?"

I laughed. "Still learning, bugaboo." I sobered as I saw everyone starting to file toward their first class. "I should be able to corner Michael between classes. However, it might go easier if you prep Olivia. Or even better, if you can manage to get Ayla to work some of her matchmaker magic for us."

Something appeared in her eyes. "Actually, Adrien, that might be a better solution than you approaching Michael. In fact," she smiled, plan starting to firm up before my eyes, "that might be a much safer solution, since you are actually his rival in this." She hooked an arm through mine and we headed toward Ms. Bustier's room.

I slid into my usual seat next to Nino, and Marinette took her position next to Ayla. Nino started to ask me something, but at that moment, Ms. Bustier entered and we launched into our planned discussion on the History of the Subcontinent. The morning went by in a blur, and before I knew it, we were at the noon break for lunch. As was my custom (or duty), I trudged toward the main entrance where I knew Gorilla was waiting to whisk me back to the mansion for lunch. Marinette managed to catch me as I was heading down the steps.

"I'm going to get lunch at home today," she said, smiling. Her deep blue eyes looked meaningfully at mine, then she leaned in and whispered: "I wouldn't mind if a stray cat happened by for dessert."

I perked up. The prospect of another lonely lunch without Father had just been replaced by the chance of some quality time with my Lady – and some freshly baked goodies. "Well," I said as I stepped into the car, "if you see any likely candidates, just remember most cats love chocolate."

She smacked me. "They do _not_," she exclaimed.

"Says you," I winked.

Once at the mansion, I once again entered the dining room to find it had been set for one, with the omnipresent Nathalie hovering to the side, reviewing something on her tablet. As quickly as I could, I bolted down the cold luncheon that had been prepared for me, and then I turned to Nathalie. "Marinette asked me to swing by before classes restarted, so I'm going to walk over to the bakery."

She looked up from her tablet, started to say something (probably along the lines that Gorilla should really be driving me), saw my expression and thought better of it, and nodded. I got up from the table, grabbed my satchel, and headed for the front door. When I thought I was safely out of sight, I found the first quasi-private spot I could and switched to Chat Noir in a green flash. Making the rooftops a moment or two later, I quickly trundled across the midday skyline of Paris toward Marinette, getting there in a new personal best time.

As I'd expected, she was already on her balcony when I quietly dropped in on the roof just above her area. "Meow," I said. "I'm lost and all alone… meow…"

Marinette turned around, laughing hard. "Chat! What a pleasant surprise."

I leapt down to the chimney I often balanced on when visiting, then moved to my usual spot on the railing. "Meow?" I asked. "Doesn't that work for me anymore?"

"No," she smiled as she came over toward me. Unexpectedly, she reached up behind one of my feline ears and started to scratch.

I felt my eyes widen, and then close in absolute bliss. "Wow," I said, feeling the rumble of a purr beginning and trying to suppress it. "You've never done _that _before…" Despite myself, I was _leaning _into her ministrations.

_Damn!_

"Milady, I am putty in your hands," I said, the purr actually getting out now.

"Good," she said, "because I need to tell you what happened."

My eyes snapped open and the purr vanished. "Ah," I said, and I swung off the railing to stand next to her. I ventured a sniff and located the box of chocolate croissants she had fruitlessly tried to hide from me beneath a blanket on her chaise. "Let me take care of these," I said as I folded myself into her chair and freed the box from its imprisonment, "while you tell me how our plan fell apart."

She raised an eyebrow. "Why do I forget you can find those things from ten miles away," she asked herself. "Slide over, kitty, and share."

I handed her one of the pastries, and snared another for myself.

"Ayla was on board," she started, and then proceeded to detail how her best friend had approached Olivia with our grand scheme of having Michael ask her to the Sweethearts Ball. It short circuited immediately, as Olivia had already been asked by someone else that very morning – eliminating the last eligible female in our class.

"Aside from me," Marinette added sadly. "Except, of course, I'm actually not available." She snuck a second croissant from the box. "Your father has totally made a mess of this situation for us."

I grabbed the last one before Marinette could claim it, too. "Michael is not going to understand, especially if he sees you there alone."

She sighed. "I won't go," she said. "There's no point if you can't be there, Chat." She looked up. "Well, I guess I meant Adrien, Chat." She laughed. "The other you," she said finally, running a gentle finger along the edge of my mask.

At that unfortunate moment, her mother called up from the bedroom below. "Marinette? Shouldn't you be back at school?"

My ears rotated back. She was a second away from opening the skylight and joining her daughter on the roof; though I was a known visitor at the Bakery, I tended to announce myself as Chat more traditionally and didn't sneak in (to their knowledge) as I just had. Normally I'd have heard her coming our way but I'd been so focused on Marinette I must have missed it.

_Not enough time to leave, _my expression told Marinette.

She nodded. _We'll roll with it_, she said with hers.

The skylight opened. "Marinette – oh! Chat Noir!" Her mom was posed holding the door. "What are you doing here? Is there a problem?"

A light bulb went off as I started to respond, and I couldn't help the gleam that suddenly appeared in my eye. Marinette must have seen it, for I saw her go rigid.

"There is, Madame Dupain-Chang." I saw Marinette furrow her brow, frowning, as I slid off the chaise lounge.

_What are you doing?_ she mouthed. I ignored her.

"I've just learned that your daughter's date for the Sweetheart's Ball has had to back out. I stopped by to ask if I might have the privilege of accompanying her to the Ball in his stead." I paused, grandly going into my world-famous bow, hand outstretched. "Princess, could a mere alley cat be your date?"

I turned my head slightly back to her mom, adding: "Purely as a companion, madame. I know where Marinette's true heart lies." I turned back to Marinette, who's eyes had gone wide and cheeks had flamed, whether from anger or from astonishment, I wasn't entirely sure. "I just don't want you to be alone on such an important occasion," I finished, pretty nobly, I thought.

_Wait – was her mom_ –

I turned around again, and Madame Dupain-Chang was actually sobbing, dabbing at her eyes with her sweater. "That is the most romantic thing I have ever seen," she cried, then looked expectantly toward Marinette.

I turned back, noting that it was actually fury that had inflamed her face. Her eyes told me that I would be paying dearly for what I had just done, but I smiled back at her, as if to say: _I know, and I look forward to it._

I held out my claw-tipped hand to her again. "Marinette?"

"Yes, Chat," she said, smiling tightly and taking my hand. "You can be my date."

I snuck another arm around her, and in one smooth motion lifted her off the chaise and into a warm embrace. I was so filled with the pure joy that I'd figured out a way to be there with my Lady that I'd momentarily forgotten what persona was standing before her. Marinette carefully cleared her throat and I tactfully released her.

Madame Dupain-Chang started sobbing again. "So... beautiful!" she cried. "I have to tell your father," she continued and started back down into the building, but not before pausing. "I'm so happy for you, dear, but you really need to get back to school."

"Yes, Mother," Marinette said, her eyes still boring into me.

_Oh boy._

I braced myself for the worst as the skylight snapped shut and was immediately rewarded with a double fisted smack into the chest.

"What were you thinking!" she practically yelled at me, angrier than I'd ever seen her before.

I felt my eyes widen in surprise. "Milady-"

"Don't you dare 'Milady' me," she said, stabbing her finger into my chest violently. "We've been insanely careful about our relationship, Adrien. The last thing we need is people starting to make assumptions if Chat shows up with Marinette at the Ball. And what is Michael going to think? It'll validate everything he thought he saw yesterday!"

"But-" I tried again.

"Arrrgh!" she cried, throwing her hands up in disgust. "You really do annoy me to pieces at times, Chat!"

"Princess-" I tried for a third time, reaching out and nabbing a shoulder of her retreating form. She wriggled out of my embrace and leaned over the railing of her balcony, the anger still palpable.

Even super heroes have trouble in situations such as these. "Look," I plunged forward. "I admit I hadn't completely thought it through-"

"Nothing unusual there," she rejoindered tartly.

I raised an eyebrow but let the insult pass. "You have to see that it neatly solves both problems," I pointed out, trying to go for conciliatory and hearing, perhaps, just the tiniest trace of pleading in my voice instead. It might have helped that I was getting pretty good at the mewling aspect of my persona. "I _really _want to be there with you. And if Adrien won't be, why not Chat? Besides," I added, "it gives Michael a better target to get annoyed with, one that can more easily handle his ire. Perhaps it will even get Adrien off the hook for a bit."

I sidled up next to her, and thought it was a good sign she didn't slide further down the railing. And I might have caught a slight quirk to her mouth. I gently rested my head on hers, taking in her complex scent that combined the bakery, her favorite perfume, and a note or two that were explicitly Ladybug whether she was in or out of costume. "I'm sorry," I said simply. "If there had been more time, I would have run it past you first. It seemed like the safest way out of your Mom finding me here unexpectedly."

She reached a hand up and pulled me closer, turned and faced me eye-to-eye. "Incorrigible," she sighed, and leaned further in to plant a smoldering kiss on my lips. It was my turn to sigh deeply as she pulled away.

"All right," she decided. "We'll try it your way. And I think I have an idea on how we can spread the word a bit to mitigate any whispers that we are romantically involved."

"Ayla," I said, smacking my forehead. "You're going to make me do an interview, aren't you?"

She reached up and tapped my bell, letting out a gentle set of tinkles and smiling as she did so. "Payback sucks, doesn't it?"

"As you wish, milady," I said despondently. Despite how Chat appeared to love the limelight, I had always been uncomfortable being interviewed by our friend. On more than one occasion I had nearly given away more information than was prudent in my attempt to curry favor with the budding journalist.

"Now," she said, continuing to tap at my bell as she spoke. It was an oddly enthralling action that was completely distracting me; I could feel a flush of embarrassment starting on my face as I realized how I was reacting to her ministrations. The entire world narrowed to that tap on my bell.

"…we are both going to be late," she was saying, as she moved the finger from the bell to the bridge of my nose, and then carefully ran it down to my lips. "Unless you are willing to give a girl a lift."

"Of course, milady," I croaked, my voice suddenly somewhere else entirely.

Marinette cocked an eyebrow slyly at me as she picked up her bookbag; I hastily grabbed her around the waist, preparatory to getting airborne. To my surprise, she intentionally snuggled into the embrace, burying her head into my chest and repressing a giggle as she did so. I could feel my flush turn to a deep, deep scarlet. My Lady knew how to push my buttons.

I carefully leapt from her balcony over to the next building, then gently loped across the Paris skyline back toward school. I wasn't entirely enthusiastic about returning and that may have slowed my progress, but in the event, I dropped down into the alley next to Françoise Dupont High School and gently released my grip on Marinette, who stepped slightly away from me so I could transform back into Adrien.

But not before I swooped in for one last kiss, smiling at the shocked expression. "Plagg - claws in!"

The green glow enveloped me and I felt the Chat Noir costume fade away, replaced by my standard button down-with-fashion-tee-and-jeans combo. Marinette hooked me by the arm and we headed toward the main entrance, arriving a few minutes early despite my attempts to be tardy.

Ayla had been posted at the massive double doors, and once she spied us, started waving frantically as we approached. "Girl!" she cried, running over to Marinette. "Is it true?"

"Is what true?" she replied cautiously, eyes flicking toward me.

"Your mom just posted this!" she squealed, turning her phone toward us.

My eyes bugged out. There on Madame Dupain-Chang's social media account was a photo of Chat Noir bowing to Marinette, hand outstretched, and Marinette reaching for it with that tight expression. The caption below it read: "So happy that my beautiful daughter will be escorted by such a gentleman!"

_Oh. My. God._

I turned toward Marinette, who had to be wearing the same expression of disbelief. "Uh, Marinette," I said, thinking quickly and trying to stay in character – as Adrien. "I'm excited you won't be going alone now!" I paused, trying to look both happy for her and a tinge jealous. "I didn't know you were friends with Chat Noir."

Actually, I _was_ feeling a bit jealous of my alter ego. Was that even possible?

She turned toward me, a bit of relief in her eyes as she latched onto the thread I'd started. "You know I really want to be there with you, Adrien," she started, "but with your father-"

"Exactly." I noticed Ayla was surreptitiously taking notes on her phone.

"Well, word got to Chat about it somehow." She shrugged. "I was having lunch at home today and he literally dropped in and offered to be my escort for the evening." She turned back toward me. "Assuming it's okay with you, of course, Adrien. He was pretty concerned that you'd not be comfortable with the situation, but also didn't want me to be alone." She looked at me pointedly. "He made that _quite _clear."

It was easier than I thought possible to be upset with my alter ego. Except it was _my_ idea in the first place. This was a bit mind-numbing. Leaning on my model abilities to emote on command, I smiled as sadly as I could and put a compassionate hand on her shoulder. "Of course, Prin—Marinette, I'm fine with it. As much as I want to be there, I really am happy that you'll still be able to go." I paused, trying to keep the gleam out of my eye. "Besides, you can't go wrong with a hunk like that."

Marinette subtly jabbed me in the ribs.

"_Any_way," Marinette continued to Ayla, "Chat wants to set up an interview with you. He's a bit worried that people might start talking..."

Ayla nodded. "He'd be right," she concurred. "I have no way to contact him, but if he can swing by my place tonight, say, after six, we can make it happen."

Marinette looked at me sideways. "Somehow, I'll let him know."

The warning bell rang, and we mutually started moving toward our afternoon classes. Nino was waiting for me in our usual spot, bouncing with energy. I'd barely sat down when he leaned over.

"Dude, seriously? You're letting Chat Noir box you out?"

I sighed, starting to realize the full extent of the mess I'd created. "Not exactly, Nino," I whispered as the teacher started to roll down the whiteboard. "It's more complicated than that. He somehow heard that Father won't let me go to the Ball, and stepped in to make sure Marinette had a date." I smiled as I pulled out my tablet. "Actually, it's kind of gallant of him."

Nino didn't look convinced. "I'm not buying it," he said. "I think he's making a move on Marinette."

"Chat Noir?" I laughed, but it sounded hollow to my own ears. _Stay in character, _I reminded myself. "He's got to be too busy trying to woo Ladybug to pursue another woman."

His eyes bugged out. "Clearly you've not heard the rumors, then."

I turned fully this time. "_What_ rumors?" I asked, shorter than I'd intended. This was getting old fast.

"That he's a Casanova, hitting on hot women throughout the city."

_That would be Cat-sanova,_ I corrected mentally. "I doubt that very much," I replied, turning back toward my tablet. "Watch the videos on your girlfriend's blog, man. Chat only has eyes for Ladybug."

"Class, turn to page seventy-one for today's experiment..." came the tinny voice of our science teacher.

Nino leaned over again. "That's not the best part," he smiled. "Michael appears to have heard the news." He pointed his chin at the back of the room.

I turned. Michael was sitting in his usual spot, and had he been a cartoon, the thunderclouds hanging over his head would have been visible with bolts of lightning shooting throughout the room. The look he was giving Marinette made my blood run cold, and I nearly started from my seat to place myself in front of her, just in case. If anyone was a candidate for akumatization, he was now People's Exhibit One.

I turned back to my tablet, only one ear on the lecture, and pulled up the IM system. While it was forbidden to use during class, I fervently hoped Marinette had hers turned on.

_Problem_, I tapped.

_What?_

_Look at Michael._

I heard her shift in her chair slightly. Then: _Well, that can't be good._

_So much for my brilliant plan._

_No,_ she tapped_. Still time for it to work. Let's see how this plays out._

_OK. But be ready..._

_I know_, she replied. _What's one more akuma in three days among friends?_

* * *

**AN: I'm worried that Adrien is having trouble keeping his personalities straight. Maybe he's just really tired... ;-)**


	5. Up In Smoke

Fortunately for us, the only excitement that afternoon was Juleka's experiment going up in a _whoosh-bang!_ of smoke and a flash of light, scaring the heck out the class but leaving most of us no worse for the experience.

Most of us.

As tired/wired as I still was, I'd landed into my standard four-point attack stance, desperately grabbing for a baton that wasn't there before realizing Hawkmoth had not actually sent us another super villain. I flopped to the ground and pushed underneath the lab bench, hoping to hide my break in character. The snort from Marinette's direction told me it hadn't passed muster with at least one classmate.

What was more troubling was that I had started to think of _Adrien_ as a character and wasn't entirely sure when that shift had taken place. One crisis at a time though: I'd need to sort that out later.

I dropped the Scared Adrien pretense, pulled myself out from under the bench and bolted up the stairs toward Juleka, reaching her side before most of the class had recovered. She was sitting against the wall, a stunned expression on her face. "Are you all right?" I asked as I knelt over her and scanned her quickly for injuries. She didn't appear to be hurt, but I didn't know if she'd hit her head after tumbling away from the lab bench. "Juleka? Can you hear me?"

She sort of tilted her head, which I thought was a good sign. Marinette had joined me and I turned to her. "Call down to the office," I said. "Might help to get the nurse up here, just in case."

She nodded and moved away quickly. I managed to get Juleka up and onto one of the stools, and Kim handed her a small cup of water. "Try this," I said, helping her take a sip.

Marinette returned. "On the way, kitty," she said, before realizing her slip. "I mean, on the way, _quickly_," she corrected. "I mean-"

"She's looking a bit better," I offered, trying to keep Marinette from digging any deeper. I looked up at the rest of our classmates, doing a mental headcount. Everyone seemed to be accounted for. Except... "Hey, where's Michael?"

Marinette looked up from Juleka, quickly scanning the room. "Anyone see where he went?"

There were murmurs but no one seemed to recall him leaving the room.

I gave Marinette a meaningful look, and she nodded fractionally. _After_, she mouthed.

I returned the nod. The latter part of our afternoon was usually open study on Friday, which meant we would not necessarily be missed if things went pear shaped and we needed to deal with Michael. Both of us shifted into battle mode, having made the implicit assumption that Hawkmoth had found a new victim. My classmates were now in need of protection, and I mentally started running through scenarios on how to get them to safety, quickly.

I looked up as the school nurse arrived and made her way up to Juleka, stepping back to give her room and fading toward the back of the crowd with Marinette.

"Coincidence?" I whispered.

"That her experiment blew up, and Michael uses it as cover to disappear?" She frowned. "Not in my book."

We stepped back a bit further to give the nurse room to help Juleka back down the steps and out of the classroom; she looked like she had recovered her wits. I turned back to Marinette, saying quietly, "If he's here at the school, he's keeping a pretty low profile. That's not usually SOP for akumatized victims."

"No," she said thoughtfully as she scanned the room again, satisfying herself that the rest of the class had suffered no ill effects.

"Where do we start?" I asked quietly as I stepped back toward my lab bench, ostensibly to straighten it back up. "Search the school, top to bottom?"

"Yes," she said. "Start in the basement, Chat, since you have better night vision; I'll clear the upper stories and we'll divide the main floor. Put in your two-way so we can stay in constant communication."

I nodded as I knelt down to repack my satchel. Marinette continued toward our teacher, and asked to be excused to use the restroom; I waited what felt like an eternity and then did the same, though I thought I heard Nino stifle a snicker as I departed.

_That could be helpful later,_ I thought.

Once clear of the classroom, I knew I had about twenty minutes before classes let out. I took the steps to the main courtyard in twos and booked it toward the Men's Restroom, found it deserted, and locked myself into one of the stalls. Plagg dutifully floated out, resigned expression on his face. "You never rest, Adrien," he chided. "I'm still digesting lunch, thank you very much."

"You're always digesting, Plagg." I held out the ring. "Plagg – claws out!"

After the glow faded, I pulled out my baton and gave it a special twist. An earwig transceiver popped out of the bottom, and I carefully placed it into my human right ear. "Online, LB," I whispered.

"Copy that, Chat," came Ladybug's immediate reply.

I thought it easier to exit from the side windows of the restroom and come around behind the school to enter the basement by the maintenance entrance. It was at the end of a steeply angled portion of the driveway that allowed delivery vehicles to back down to the subterranean level. Somewhat fortuitously, the steel door had been rolled open in anticipation of my arrival (or, perhaps more mundanely, the refuse truck which normally arrived about that time each Friday).

I loped down the driveway and into the basement space, allowing my night vision to kick in as I moved further into the area. Nothing was amiss in the warehouse section, and I quickly moved into the very scary boiler room; here again, everything was in order, save for the rather dusty conditions. I took time and was thorough, poking my feline body into every nook and cranny just to be sure Michael (or whatever he had become) was not attempting to avoid detection.

"LB, not seeing anything down here," I whispered. "Moving to sublevel one."

"Ditto on the roof. Going to the main classroom level now."

I crept around one of the larger boilers and opened the door to the maintenance stairwell, leapt up an entire flight to the next landing and carefully placed a feline ear to the door. Nothing appeared to be happening on the other side. Carefully, I cracked the door open and stealthy crept into the area where less-used textbooks were stored, crinkling my nose at the smell of moldering paper. It was so intense that it made my eyes water.

I climbed through the stacks of books, still finding nothing, and moved into the next room, where the school supplies were stored. My nose was assaulted with a mélange of glue, pencil, toner and other scents, but nothing out of the ordinary for the space. Still, I combed through every shelf and behind every door.

Nothing.

The final space housed general storage: chairs, tables, pom-poms (!) and the amazing other odds and ends a multi-year school would need to have on hand to support the varied activities of its student body. I even came across the set from the last play the drama club had done – something called _A Walk in the Woods_ – a park bench surrounded by faux trees and a grass path. But no sign of Michael.

"Coming up empty, LB," I whispered. "Heading to the main floor now."

"Copy."

I popped out of the maintenance stairwell fairly close to my favorite corner of the courtyard, and pressed myself into the shadows below the staircase while I waited for Ladybug. Popping open my baton, I saw we had about five minutes before classes let out. Aside from the restrooms, the locker rooms, and the gym itself, there weren't many more places to search. But five minutes was cutting it pretty close.

Quiet footfalls approached and Ladybug popped through the same doorway I'd exited. "Nothing?"

"Nothing," I confirmed, as I scanned the wide-open courtyard again. "We've got about three minutes. Might I suggest, milady, that our civilian selves clear this level?"

"You're thinking they might panic if we are out here, unannounced?" She nodded slightly. "Good thought, but be prepared to book it if we need to."

I nodded as well and stepped back into the corner again. "Plagg – claws in."

"Tikki – spots off."

Two flashes later and I was working my way along the left side of the courtyard and the men's lockers; Marinette the opposite side. We'd managed to make it back to the restrooms on the far side of the courtyard just as the bell rang and students started to flood the space. I made as if I'd just now come out of the restroom, and Marinette did the same, preserving (sort of) our cover story.

Ayla flew down the steps from the classroom and pounced on us. "Seriously?" she smiled. "Of all the times to sneak out for a romantic tryst!"

I felt my face flame. "It's nothing like that," I stammered.

"I just found Adrien here," Marinette stammered simultaneously. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see she'd turned a shade of pink as well.

_Not helping our case, milady._

"_Seriously_," Ayla waggled a finger at us. "Twenty _minutes_."

_Okay_, I thought. _Lean into it, Adrien._

Pulling out some Chat swagger, I draped an arm around Marinette. "All right, all right, you've busted me," I confessed. "I've been trying to talk Marinette out of going to the Ball with Chat Noir." I then channeled Adrien the Model, looking as downcast as possible. "I admit to feeling a tad jealous about the whole thing and might have overreacted."

"Just a little," Marinette said.

I snapped my head around and glared at her. _Don't bury yourself in the part, milady_, I thought at her.

"But he's seen reason," she continued, "as he always does."

_Message received._ "Anyway, can you keep this between the three of us?" I asked, plaintively, my eyes flicking to the increasing number of students clearly trying to hear what was going on.

Ayla crossed her heart. "Absolutely, as long as you make sure Chat Noir is on my balcony tonight." She winked as she wandered away.

"She is going to be a journalist to be reckoned with," I observed as I moved my arm down to her waist and gently hugged her closer. "Is it possible to be jealous of your alter ego?" I mused as we stepped away from the restrooms.

"I have no idea," she answered, "but we have bigger issues to deal with."

I nodded. "He's clearly not here," I said. "That means he must be somewhere in the broader city. And that's a larger problem."

"I agree." She sighed. "We've got to expand the search, then," she said with resignation.

My phone buzzed: Gorilla was waiting for me out front. I frowned. "I'm supposed to be in Fencing practice again this afternoon," I said quietly. "It will be obvious if I miss two this week; can you start without me? I'll try to get away as quickly as I can. Sooner if you need me."

"Yes," she replied, keeping her voice below the chatter of our classmates. "Buzz me when you are out."

I turned toward her, holding her shoulders. "If you find him, _don't engage without me," _I implored.

"I can defend myself," she replied defiantly, with a half-smile aimed at me. "But it's good to know you're still worried about me, _Adrien_," she added.

"Promise me," I said, more urgently than I'd intended. "I have a really bad feeling about this."

She must have seen the worry in my eyes, and nodded. "Hurry to me, kitty," she said quietly.

Marinette hustled up the stairs, ostensibly headed to the library to continue with her fashion sketches, while I met Gorilla out front and was whisked off to my thrice-weekly practice with my competitive club. After changing up and leaving Plagg behind in my locker, I joined the rest of the team and hunkered down for the mad series of exercises our coach usually had planned for us.

Kagami stationed herself next to me, which was not unusual, but I knew she was working up to something. She also seemed to be keeping close tabs on the Adrien/Marinette relationship, almost as close as Chat Noir with Marinette and the world in general, which again made me wonder where along the line of "stalker" I was falling these days. Kagami's radar must have gone up when the word got out about Chat taking Marinette to the Ball, and I cringed in anticipation that she might try to convince me (as Adrien) to give up on the pipe dream of Marinette once and for all.

In an attempt to get away from a potentially untenable situation, I immediately volunteered for whatever demonstration coach wanted to give and took myself away from the line, throwing myself into the moves. That gave way to pair work, and I was fortunately matched up with someone else for the remainder of the first hour of practice. At the natural break between sessions, I apologized to coach and begged off the remainder of practice with a sore ankle; I'd made an exaggerated move late in a series of parries with my partner, feigning a sudden twist and coming up lame in the process.

He released me and I gingerly limped back to the locker room, closing the door behind me. After verifying the coast was clear, I quickly stepped back to my locker and changed back into my street clothes, pocketing Plagg in his usual spot as I snapped the locker closed.

I pulled out my cell phone and started to text Gorilla: _Sprained_ – I backed that out -_ Twisted ankle at practice, ready to go home._

A moment later I got confirmation he was waiting for me at the main entrance. I grabbed my gear and exited the locker room, remembering to limp slightly as I crossed the space and out the door. The drive back to the mansion was uneventful, and Nathalie met me at the door with what passed (for her) as a concerned expression. "Do you need someone to look at that?" she asked as I slowly made my way up the steps from the sedan.

"No," I said, wincing for effect. "A little ice and elevation and it should be good."

"I'll have chef send up dinner, then," she offered.

I nodded as I passed her and slowly worked my way up the marble staircase to my room. Once inside, I tossed my gear to the ground and placed myself on the couch, ankle on a pillow. As I'd anticipated, Chef arrived a moment later with an early dinner, which he wheeled in and set close. "Shall I serve, Master Adrien?" he asked formally.

"No thanks," I replied, wincing again. "I'm not quite ready to eat. I'll buzz down when you can clear the plates."

"Very good, sir," he said, bowing as he backed out of the room.

I waited for a few extra seconds, then bounded off the couch and into the bathroom, raising my ring in the process. "Plagg - claws out!"

The flash had barely receded before I'd leapt through my open window, landed on the fence and leapt again into the air. I helicoptered away from the mansion and landed on an adjacent light post, then flipped open the phone on my baton. Ladybug picked up immediately. "I'm out of practice early, milady, but was delayed slightly ensuring my alter ego is where he is supposed to be at this hour. Where are you?"

"At the Louvre," she replied. "Nothing so far. I checked with his family first, and they haven't seen or heard from him since he left for school this morning. I didn't want to worry them, so as far as they know I was looking for him for a different reason."

I scanned the horizon. "And nothing else is going on?" I asked, puzzled. It had never taken this long for Hawkmoth to seize on an opportunity before, and I said as much to Ladybug.

"I agree. That makes this all the more concerning."

"There is also the possibility that it's _already_ happened," I added. "And he's creating some sort of master plan while he lays low. We've encountered that before." Specifically, I was thinking of the well-played near disaster Volpina had nearly wreaked, and how close she'd come to making it happen a second time during Hero's Day.

"Well, we're not getting anywhere fast," she said. "Meet me at the Eiffel Tower and we'll try to figure out something."

"On my way," I said as I clicked off the phone and booked toward one of the best-known landmarks in the world. Once I arrived, though, it took longer than I wanted to surreptitiously climb to the uppermost level of the tower – it wouldn't do for Chat Noir to appear in social media posts from the Tower today. Ladybug was waiting for me just below the radio antenna, looking worried.

"There are days, milady, when I covet your yo-yo," I said lightly as I folded myself into a sitting position on the slanted roof just to her side. "Today would be one of them."

She smiled, then immediately sobered. "I'm wracking my brain, but I can't think of any obvious place that we should look that I've not already visited." She looked back across the city's horizon. "He might just be at the movies for all we know."

I nodded as I'd reached the same solution. "There's only two of us; even if you call up our Miraculous Temp Agency, there's still too much ground to cover."

She rolled her eyes at my reference to the three other Miraculouses we had worked with in the past. I still only knew the identity of one of them – Chloe, of all people – and was hoping someday soon Ladybug would clue me in on the others. But I had worked with them enough now that I had a very strong suspicion I knew who the other couple were in civilian life.

_Couples_, I thought idly. _Isn't it cosmic how everything winds up getting paired off?_

I sat up. _Couples!_

"We're going about this wrong," I said. "Instead of looking for _him_, we need to create a situation where he's going to find us. At a specific place and time."

Ladybug met my gaze. "The Ball," she said. "Of course!" She started tapping a finger against her yo-yo. "If we get you over to Ayla for that interview, he's certain to see it, and it will confirm that you and I, or rather _Marinette_, will be there tomorrow night." She looked back at me. "If the endgame here is getting back at one or both of us, that would be too good of an opportunity to pass up."

"Not to mention the obligatory Hawkmoth agenda to remove our Miraculous jewels."

Ladybug nodded, and clicked open her yo-yo to check the time on her phone. "What time did Ayla want you?"

"Six, I think," I answered.

"Feel like a snack?" she asked, smiling that amazing smile that always melted me.

"I thought you'd never ask."

* * *

**AN: Yes, there is a lot of food in this series for some reason - and more coming as they say. Just goes to show you that you shouldn't write on an empty stomach. ;-)**

**This is shaping up to top out at ten parts, plus an epilogue. Unless I suddenly get diverted...**

**And let me know how you think this first person version is going. Comments welcome.**


	6. Message Sent

I landed on the Bakery's rooftop a half step behind Ladybug, waited graciously as she transformed back to Marinette, then hopped back over the edge to crawl down to the main entrance of the store. With as much dignity as I could, clad in a skintight black suit, I opened the door to find Marinette's father behind the counter, waiting on an older woman with blue-white hair. I patiently examined the wares on display as I randomly flicked my tail, taking in the heavenly scents presented by the rows and rows of freshly made goodies on display. I could die happy in the middle of that space.

"See you again tomorrow, Madame Moussaid," Tom Dupain said, then turned toward me. "Chat Noir?" he said, with that iciness fathers seemed to have for their daughter's potential suitors. I thought it was vaguely funny that he didn't seem to be connecting with Chat, but was effusive whenever Adrien was present.

"Monsieur Dupain," I said pleasantly. "Is Marinette at home? I have an appointment with a friend of hers but, and this is tough to admit for a cat-about-town, I have no idea where I'm to go. Marinette was kind enough to agree to take me."

He waggled an eyebrow. I might not have been as convincing as I thought. "She is, is she?"

"Dad?" Marinette came through the door that I knew led to the family space. "Oh – hi Chat!"

"Princess," I bowed. "As agreed, I am here early so you can take me to see Ayla."

"Prompt as always," she smiled, then caught her father's look. "Uh, we've got a few minutes. Care to come in for a quick bite?"

"I'd be delighted," I replied, before turning to her father. "If that is acceptable, Monsieur Dupain…?"

He thawed slightly and smiled. "Of course." He turned and pulled two chocolate croissants from the display case, wrapped them in wax paper, and handed them to me. "Enjoy," he murmured as he turned to the couple that had come in behind me. They appeared to be somewhat agog that one of Paris's super heroes had a sweet tooth.

Marinette led me up to her room, where she had already laid out some additional nibbles: fresh ham and spinach quiche, a half loaf of sourdough, and a steaming teapot. Two cups with saucers were close by, along with a cute pink matched sugar bowl and creamer. I folded myself into standard cat position, but allowed my manners to take over, waiting as she sliced a wedge from the quiche for me.

"I can't tell you how divine it smells," I said, closing my eyes appreciatively. "I could sit in your bakery for hours and just luxuriate in the scents." I opened them and noted she had started to nibble at her slice, so I lifted my fork and quickly demolished most of mine in a few efficient strokes.

I looked at her expectantly and saw the quirked smile and her nod in the direction of the remaining quiche. I deftly snared a second slice and made shorter work of that. Between fencing practice and multiple outings as Chat Noir that day, I was starting to think I was channeling Plagg's bottomless stomach. I prudently decided to leave the remainder of the quiche to Marinette and moved on to the tea, knowing that my wide green eyes kept darting toward the wax paper-wrapped croissants. My enhanced sense of smell told me these had been baked with Belgian chocolate, which was at the top of my all-time favorite list.

"I don't think I'll be missed straightaway," I said, trying to ignore the allure of the chocolate. "But I should get back at a more reasonable hour tonight." I paused. "I feel like we aren't going to get anywhere with Michael tonight. I thought about it on the way over, and it makes the most sense that he has no direct plans to take out Paris. His beef is with you."

"And you," she pointed out. "Well, technically, _both _of you."

I put a clawed finger to my chin, thinking. "As Michael, he can't get to Adrien directly," I mused. "Between Gorilla and the security at the mansion, it would be a tall order." I looked at her. "You're more exposed here," I said, concern lacing my words. "As is your family. And if he _is _akumatized, all bets are off for all of us – there's no telling what he might be able to do."

I tapped the claw on my chin. "I don't know enough about him to make a guess as to what his 'power' would be. Knowing that, or at least guessing correctly, could help us." I took a sip of the tea, swirled in a bit more cream, and sipped again. "I would be willing to bet that whatever he's planning, it will go down at the Ball."

Marinette had finally finished her first slice and started on the second. "I've come to the same conclusion," she said. "This is going to be a highly targeted akuma attack, I think. If Hawkmoth has done what we think, he may have finally picked a victim that has enough of a grudge against us that we are going to have our hands full." She reached over to the sourdough and broke it in half, handing a portion to me.

"I think we need to focus on finding out as much as we can about Michael," I said around a mouthful of bread. "Should we start at the school? He may have left some stuff behind in his locker that would be helpful to review."

"Yes, and follow the threads from there." She glanced at her phone. "All right, Chat, time to get you to Ayla."

I nodded sadly, the croissants still in their wax paper. "Can you at least stuff those into your purse?"

Marinette laughed and did just that, though not before telling Tikki to leave my croissants alone.

We exited back through the bakery, ensuring her father saw us leave together (and appropriately). I wrapped an arm around her and extended my baton into the air, landing us on a roof, then started loping toward our destination, carrying Marinette in my arms. I was, of course, fully aware of where Ayla's family had their condo, and it took just a few minutes for us to navigate our highway in the sky to get there.

As expected, our friend was waiting for us on their balcony when we gently landed. I released Marinette and went into full Chat Noir mode. "Mademoiselle Cesaire," I said grandly, bowing. "Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today."

"Anytime, Chat," Ayla gushed. I saw her flick an expression to Marinette.

"I figured it was easier to bring him myself," she offered innocently.

Ayla raised an eyebrow. I knew immediately this was going to be a tough interview. "You sit over here," she said, pointing to an impromptu arrangement of a wicker love seat and a folding chair looking a bit like something from one of those news magazines. She handed her phone to Marinette and positioned her over Ayla's shoulder, and once she was convinced Marinette was recording, settled in and turned to me with laser focus.

"So, Chat, why are you taking Marinette to the Ball?" she started, immediately going for the jugular.

I leaned back in the chair as much as it would allow, casually draping my arm across the back of the love seat. "Well, Ayla," I started, drawing little circles on the fabric with a claw and choosing my words very carefully, "as you already know, I became aware that her date was unable to go with her—"

"Who told you?" she pounced.

I put a paw on my heart, smiling cagily. "Like you, I can't reveal my sources."

Marinette's mouth quirked.

"Anyway," I continued, intentionally picking up my tail and slowly twirling it. "I bumped into her at the plaza yesterday – just ahead of that akumatized candy maker - and happened to see the dress she'd planned on wearing." I smiled. "She'd put so much work into it, I felt awful that she'd not have a chance to actually wear it."

I had direct line of sight to Marinette, and so far, I appeared to still be on script.

"I talked it over with Ladybug," I continued, seeing her nod, "and together we decided to try and help her out." I smiled wider. "Now, I just want to go on record here: Ladybug is the only woman for this cat." I turned and looked directly into the camera. "Sorry, ladies, but I am off the market."

Ayla's jaw dropped. Technically we'd not formally announced that particular tidbit, so it qualified as a bona fide scoop for her blog. "Uh—" she started.

I kept going, ignoring her. "As I explained to Marinette's parents, I'm simply escorting this lovely young woman to the Ball. Nothing more." I smiled wider. "Besides, I don't get a chance to show off my moves that often, anyway."

Marinette shook her head. _Whoops_.

"Anyway, I hope that straightens everything out." I winked at Ayla. "I assume you'll be there yourself."

"Ah, uh—" Ayla continued to flounder.

My baton conveniently beeped at that moment. I held up a paw as I retrieved it and flipped open the phone, noting my timer had reached zero. "Apologies, Mademoiselle, but I've got to check into this alert." I looked up at Marinette, trying to go for a truly concerned expression. "I'll run you home first, Princess."

"Of course, Chat," Marinette said quickly as she clicked off the phone's video function. "Sorry, Ayla," she apologized as she handed it back to her friend. "Was that enough for your blog?"

"Yes," she said, still slightly dazed. "It'll go up within the hour."

I stood up and leaned over, gently placing a kiss on Ayla's cheek. "Can't wait to see it," I said as I moved toward Marinette and wrapped my arm around her.

"You… you _read _my blog?"

"Of course I do," I replied, smiling wider. "See you tomorrow evening."

And with that, I extended my baton and vaulted away from my nonplussed friend.

"Not bad, Chat," Marinette said as we worked our way back toward the bakery. "Didn't expect you to throw the Ladybug-Chat thing out there, but that might work to our advantage."

"That was my thought," I replied as we landed on a rooftop and I loped toward the next one. "I did ad-lib the 'talked with Ladybug' part, but technically, I did."

She rolled her eyes as I launched over an alley and onto another roof. "How early can you meet at the school?" she asked, tactfully changing topics.

"I should make an appearance at breakfast, on the off-chance Father decides to join me," I said sourly. "But no later than seven. Does that work?" I waited a beat. "Presuming I can slip away. I suspect even if he's not at breakfast, they are going to keep a tight leash on me."

"Seven should work," she said as we gently dropped to her rooftop balcony at the Bakery.

I released her and swiveled her around for a kiss. It wound up being a bit more intense than I'd expected, nearly curling my toes back. When we pulled away from each other, I gasped for air, saying, "What was that for?"

She tapped me on the bell again. "I never fully realized before this afternoon the depth of your compassion for humanity, Chat. And just how much more that makes me love you." Her eyes gleamed as she looked up at me. "You really did feel badly about the Ball, didn't you?"

I lowered my head to her hair. "Yes," I said simply. "Not because I wasn't going, but because I was preventing you from going."

She nuzzled into my chest in the fading light, and sighed contentedly. "You'd better get home, Chat."

I let her go, but not before stealing one last kiss. "Until tomorrow, bugaboo."

Turning, I leapt onto the railing and twisted into a double barrel, extending my baton into vault mode as I started my way back to the mansion. The last rays of light marked the magic hour had arrived as I wended a path across the skyline, casting long shadows and filling the air with purple light. As always, it was beautiful in only the way Paris can be.

Of course, I was looking at it through the lens of my emotions, which were as giddy as they had ever been. I cherished each moment Ladybug uttered the words, "I love you."

The mansion loomed large and I swung around to the side, but something made me land on the fence and pause. My feline vision thought it had picked up a movement in my bedroom, though the way the light was hitting the massive windows, I was having trouble picking out anything. Still, my ears perked up and my other senses went into overdrive – but only the way they did when trouble was afoot.

Mindful of the plaza, I pulled out my baton and tried to call Ladybug. I didn't expect her to pick up – and she didn't – so I flipped it to Marinette's number and redialed. Her worried face appeared. "Chat?"

"Something's off at the mansion," I whispered. "I'm thinking it might be prudent to have backup."

"On my way," she acknowledged and clicked off.

I retreated from the fence to a nearby rooftop that gave me a broad view of the mansion, and impatiently awaited the arrival of Ladybug. In truth, it was less than five minutes before I heard the _zing! _of her yo-yo and she quietly landed next to me.

"What did you see?" she asked.

I shrugged. "For a moment, I thought I saw someone in the main part of my bedroom. But the sun is still at the wrong angle – I can't get a good look yet."

"So do we wait, or do we go in?" she mused. "You think it's Michael?"

"Or worse, my Father," I said dejectedly.

Ladybug's eyes widened. "That would definitely complicate matters. Is he in the habit of searching your room when you are out?"

"Remember," I said morosely, "I'm not supposed to be out."

"Good point."

I wilted. "I only see one option," I mewled. "Chat has to go in there, and deal with the consequences."

She nodded. "I'll stay out here, but can be there in split second if you need me."

Twisting my baton, I popped the earwig back out again. "This way, you can listen in," I said as I slid it carefully into my human ear. Ladybug retrieved her matching one from the yo-yo, and nodded.

I started to jump up. Ladybug caught my tail, arresting my movement. "Be safe," she cautioned.

I nodded and leapt back toward the fence, and then around to the open bedroom window. I figured the direct approach was warranted, and landed gently on the edge of the windowsill.

Father was sitting on the couch, with an odd expression. "Chat Noir," he said, almost as if he'd been expecting me.

"Good evening, Mr. Agreste," I replied. "Is your son here? I was hoping to talk to him." I leapt down and into the bedroom. "We're trying to locate a classmate of his who went missing this afternoon."

"There seems to be an epidemic of that tonight," Father said listlessly. "Adrien is missing as well."

"Careful, Chat," I heard Ladybug warn me.

I took a step toward Father. "He is? When was the last time you saw him?"

"Chef apparently brought him an early dinner; that was the last time, about three hours ago, I guess. None of the staff have seen him since, but both the bedroom and bathroom windows were wide open."

He looked up at me, and I tried not to flinch at the cold, calculating look he was giving me. "I'm aware that he knows you," he continued. "Don't try to deny it, we have audio of you and Ladybug being in this space without my knowledge."

"_What?_" Ladybug breathed.

_The intercom, _I suddenly remembered. During the mess with Last Walker, Ladybug had huddled with me in the bathroom closet to strategize on our plan, and I'd later found the two-way microphone had been on during our conversation. I'd intended to tell her about it, but it had completely slipped my mind.

Now I knew for sure that someone had been listening, though knowing it had been recorded freaked me out. I kept my voice calm. "There's nothing to deny," I answered. "We've rescued many people since becoming the protectors of Paris, including both you _and_ your son, Mr. Agreste. Adrien is one of many students we know at Françoise Dupont High School that we sometimes turn to when we need help."

I couldn't believe how cold those eyes trained on me were, almost as if there was a deeper malice that I'd never once thought Father capable of. My senses went to high alert, rattling me slightly.

Father stood up from the couch and moved toward where I was standing. I stood my ground as he towered over me, and might have actually tried to stretch a little taller. "If anything has happened to my son, I will hold the two of you personally responsible." He leaned down into my face. "I will use every tool, _every tool_, at my disposal to bring both you and Ladybug to justice."

I stared at him, stunned by the implied threat, and choked back the first fifteen snarly responses, though I did feel my lip curl back aggressively. "There's no need to be upset, sir," I said trying not to grit my teeth as I spoke. "If he's missing, I'll find him, too."

"I don't think so," he said, as he swiftly pulled back from me. That cruel smile reappeared. "In fact, you're not going anywhere."

My blood ran cold as I saw what he'd been hiding in his hand – the panic button for the mansion, which he mashed before I could react. Alarms blared throughout the space; I swiveled but was a fraction of a second too late – the metal bulletproof shielding had already slammed down over the bedroom windows, and I knew the same had taken place in the bathroom and every other point of access. He'd triggered the lock down mechanism, effectively making me a hostage.

"Now," he said as the alarms continued to blare, "I want you to contact Ladybug. Tell her she has an hour to locate my son; if she fails, I will personally take you to the authorities and publicly swear an allegation that you and your partner attempted to rob me."

"Sir," I said, forcing a calmness to my voice that I very much didn't feel, "I understand you are angry—"

"You have no idea!" he thundered as he backed toward the door to my room. He triggered something from a panel I didn't realize was there, and I watched, stunned, as a set of bars dropped in front of him, making the room a virtual jail.

_Glad I didn't know about those. What else is hidden in this house?_

"Now," he said with cold fury, "call Ladybug."

Anger infused my movements as I pulled the baton from the small of my back. Without dropping my glare at Father, I flipped the baton open and speed dialed Ladybug. As I anticipated, she picked up immediately. "Chat?" she asked, playing along as if she'd not already heard the entire conversation.

"LB, I've run into a bit of a problem at the Agreste mansion…"


	7. Altered Trajectory

Fury ran through me like electricity as I stood there, staring down Father. In some ways his actions were very typical of how he'd run my life, especially after Mother had disappeared; but his inability to accept that Chat Noir was there to help made my blood boil. It was almost like he had some sort of vendetta against Chat, something I'd never had any inkling existed. This was turning into a night of firsts.

"Adrien is missing," I said tightly, "and Mr. Agreste has… detained me in order to encourage you to locate his son."

"Detained?" she said with some alarm. "Chat, are you all right? What's going on?"

"I'm okay for the moment, madame," I said, intentionally _not_ using my normal moniker for her. "But he has made it plain to me that there will be consequences if his son doesn't turn up soon."

"He's holding _us_ responsible?" I admired how her incredulous tone came through.

"Yes," I said simply. "Look, I'll be fine. Go see if he's with his friends or something. I feel like this can be cleared up fairly quickly."

"Agreed," she said. _Message received, _she was really saying;_ hang tight and I'll figure out something_.

She clicked off and I closed the baton, but kept it in my hand. It was an overtly threatening action, and I saw it register with Father who took a half step backward despite being behind the safety of the bars.

I crossed the space in a single leap, rolling up in front of the bars in a smooth motion; it surprised him and he stepped back again, eyes widening. I ran my baton across the bars, relishing in the metallic _clink clink clink _as I did so. "I don't understand your animosity toward me or my partner, Mr. Agreste. But believe me when I tell you, we don't easily back down."

I caught his eye and held it. "Don't underestimate us."

That cruel smile appeared again. "Oh, Chat Noir, I fully know what I'm getting into. It is you who should be careful of underestimating _me_." He turned on heel and exited my room, closing the door behind him.

"_Merde_," I heard in my ear. "This is a fine mess."

"I concur," I replied quietly. "I don't know if we're being monitored but we should be careful just in case."

"Copy that." She paused. "How did he get a recording of us?"

"I have an answer to that," I said, "and it's my fault for not telling you sooner. But we'll deal with that later. In the meantime…"

I smashed my fist into the intercom panel by the door, watching it explode in a mass of sparks; I did the same for the one next to the bed, and then moved into the bathroom and took that one out as well. "That makes me feel better," I said.

"At least for a moment," I continued, as I also verified that the windows in the bathroom had indeed been covered by the metal rolldown shielding. "Cataclysm should get through this," I mused, "but something tells me that's not the right move."

"No," she replied. "In fact, I think he might be counting on you escaping that way."

I started nodding. "It would work with the robbery narrative." I leaned against the shower, arms folded, foot angled against the marble. "What now?"

"Well," she started. "Clearly we need Adrien to get home, but that presents a different conundrum. For if Adrien is returned home…"

"Exactly," I finished for her. "Adrien will likely remain locked down through Monday." I slid down the marble and wound up sitting on the floor, back to the wall. "I'm not seeing how we can accomplish both goals. _And _we still need to locate Michael…"

"I have an idea," Ladybug said. I could hear her moving now, the yo-yo zinging in the background. "I'm going to visit our… mutual friend, and pick up a winglady."

_Rena_. "Spot on, milady. Brilliant." I paused. "Let me make another call," I said suddenly. "I think our other mutual friend might be a logical location to, uh, locate Adrien."

There was a long silence as Ladybug considered the dual meaning of what I had just said. "All right," she agreed. "I'm going offline for a bit." The earwig clicked and she was gone.

I flipped up the baton and dialed Nino. His face appeared and went into shock when he saw me. "Chat… Chat Noir?" he stammered.

"No time to explain," I said quickly. "Ladybug is on her way to you and we both need your help. Are you in?"

"Always," he said, and I knew immediately I had guessed right. _Hah!_

"Good." This was the tricky part. "She will explain everything, but it's important that you follow her instructions completely." I paused. "And regardless of what secrets you might find out in this process, you have to promise me you will guard them with your life."

"I will," he said with deep seriousness.

I clicked off and continued to ruminate there on the floor in my bathroom. It felt odd to be in my house, my _bathroom_ even, and completely unable to change back to the normal occupant of the space. Don't get me wrong, I love being Chat Noir; I tended to find ways to stay as Chat as much as I could. But at the end of day, I always had the option of going back to Completely Ordinary Adrien.

Tonight, no magic was trapping me as Chat Noir; in fact, I probably could simply drop my transformation and reveal to Father just who was under the mask and get on with life. Intrinsically, though, I knew that was the worst possible option. He didn't need to know what I did in pursuit of keeping Paris safe – nor how dangerous my nightly carousing was. And it could put him into danger as we got closer and closer to taking down Hawkmoth, which I felt Ladybug and I would ultimately do. So that left me in the current predicament, needing to have both Adrien _and _Chat Noir present at the same time.

I had a sense of what Ladybug was planning and felt completely helpless.

I continued to sit there, idly tossing my baton up into the air, and then from hand-to-hand. I'd started counting the spots on the tile when the earwig finally clicked back to life. "Chat?"

"I'm here, Ladybug."

"We're outside the mansion," she said. "Adrien is about to enter the house."

"Copy that."

I waited, heart racing. I had no way to see what was going on, so I started to pace the main part of the bedroom. I knew how long we had to keep the charade up and hoped my doppelgänger arrived in under five minutes. At two and a half, the door to the bedroom opened and Father was standing there with, well, _me_, looking a bit nonplussed.

Father hit something and the bars rolled upward; his visage had changed completely. "My apologies, Chat Noir," he said as the two of them moved into the bedroom together. As he did so, the metal shutters rolled upward and I could smell the freedom of the night air as it rushed into the space. "I did underestimate the two of you; you were as good as your word."

Adrien looked at me with a fair approximation of my expression of remorse. "I'm sorry for the trouble," he said. "I'd wanted a chance to play that new video game and was over at Nino's."

_That was lame, _I thought, letting a bit of a frown appear. _But Father might buy it._

Adrien turned toward Father. "I know I should have asked, but I also knew you'd probably not let me go."

Father actually smiled at him, something he _rarely _did, bringing a lump to my throat. "I might have said yes, too, son." He looked at me again. "I'm sorry, Chat," he apologized again. "I may have said… some things… that were fueled by anger and fear. Thank you, again."

Father got up and shook my hand. "It's been a long evening," he said, squeezing the bridge of his nose with a pinch. "Adrien, do you need anything?"

"No, Father," he said. I swear he _winked _at me when he said it.

"Okay," he said. "I know you wanted to ask him some questions, so I'll let you get to it."

He closed the door behind him as he left, and I turned toward Adrien. "I'm impressed," I said.

"Can I cook or can't I," I heard in my ear. "We're about to lose it though."

"On it," I said as I hustled Adrien off the couch and bounded into the bathroom, locking the door a fraction of a second before the illusion rolled away and Carapace was standing in my bathroom. He had the widest know-it-all grin I had ever seen before, and his eyes filled with joyful acceptance of our mutual secrets beneath the goggles.

"Don't you even say it," I hissed. "And for the record, I know who's under those goggles… dude."

The smile widened further.

"Rena's going to transform," Ladybug said in my ear. "I'm going to get her recharged and then station her close by in case we need to do this again."

"We will," I said soberly. "Tell her thanks."

"Copy that. I'll be back, wait for me." She clicked off.

I turned back to Nino. "Please tell me you never suspected. It'll crush my acting aspirations."

"No," he said honestly. "Not until Ladybug told us tonight."

"Us?" I groaned. "So Rena's in the loop now, too."

Carapace's eyes bugged. "You know who Rena is, don't you?"

"I suspected. Ladybug has been pretty careful, but the two of you are a couple whether transformed or not."

"As are you two," he pointed out. "Now that I see it," he added hastily after catching my expression.

The earwig clicked. "Back," I heard in my ear. "Ready for phase two, kitty."

"Let me get things squared away here, one second."

I looked at Carapace. "Run the shower for about ten minutes, and then turn the lights out. If we are lucky, the house will assume I went to bed after the events today, but be careful. Do you have an earwig?"

"A what?"

"Turn around," I said, which he dutifully did. I snapped off his shield and scanned the surface, found a likely option and pressed. A small, green colored earwig dropped out of the shell, which I handed to Carapace. "I assume Rena will already be on this channel," I said as he slid it into his ear. He nodded.

It dawned on me I had no idea what sort of extended abilities he had. "Enhanced hearing?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"All right. You'll have to be very careful, then."

"Will do," he said as he reached in and turned on the shower. "And you know how turtles love water…" he smiled.

I returned the smile. "Be careful," I repeated, "and call for help immediately." We fist pumped and I bounded to the window and out to the fence.

Ladybug was on the roof I'd left her on, with Rena Rouge now keeping her company. I hugged Rena. "Thank you," I said simply.

"You're welcome," she smiled. "But we are going to have to talk about that line of baloney you fed me earlier today for the blog."

I turned toward Ladybug. "We're all on the same page now?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Apparently," she sighed with resignation, "and against my better judgement."

I turned back to Rena. "Keep him safe?" I implored.

"I will," she said, pressing my bicep in affirmation. Her eyes widened. "Man – I had no idea-"

"_Rena!_" Ladybug hissed in a very un-ladylike way. "Hands to yourself."

That brought a smile to my face. "Wow, defending my honor now, are we?" I threaded my hands behind my hair, grinning more wildly than ever. "This _has_ been quite the day."

Ladybug smacked me. "Given that it's nearly tomorrow at this point," she said, looking at her yo-yo phone display, "I suggest we move up our schedule a bit."

"School, then?"

"Yes." She turned back to Rena. "We'll be back in less than an hour," she said. "I'm not sure either of us are going to be good for anything later today unless we get some sleep."

"Got it," the fox replied.

"Chat?"

"After you, milady."

I should have been exhausted, but wasn't, easily falling in next to Ladybug as we made our familiar way toward school. It was late enough that the streets of Paris were nearly empty. We dropped down onto the roof of the school; my night vision allowed me to quickly locate an unlocked skylight and we dropped into the courtyard side-by-side.

My feline ears scanned the space and didn't hear anything out of place; same visually. "Clear," I said.

"Let's start with his personal locker," she said.

We carefully crept up the staircase and into our home classroom. The lockers were against the far wall, and Ladybug snapped on her yo-yo light to review the names stenciled on the outside of each. "Here," she said.

I stepped in front of her and eyed the lock. The first clue that he was not an ordinary student? He had the only keyed lock; everyone else was a standard combo lock. That worked in my favor, though. Carefully, I inserted my longest claw and leaned a feline ear close, hearing as I triggered the tumblers. "Almost…" I said. "Got it!"

The lock clicked open and I withdrew the claw and then the lock itself, stepping back for Ladybug. She pulled the door open to expose…

Nothing. It was completely empty, save for a tiny piece of scrap paper.

"This is odd," I said. "Who has an empty locker?"

Ladybug bent down and retrieved the paper, and flipped it over. "Is it blank?" she asked, holding it up to me.

I scanned it with my better night vision. "No," I said. "It has an address on it –" I looked up. "It's the Grand Hotel," I said.

"_Merde_," she breathed for the second time that day.

We worked our way through the rest of Michael's personal areas in the school: the art room (empty), locker room (empty), library (empty) and finally wound up at the main office. I repeated my claw-in-the-lock action and popped open the permanent records of our classmates, and Ladybug pulled out his personal file.

I felt a tad uneasy reading what was not normally suitable for us to see, but the file was sparse and only had a summary of his coursework and contact information. Ladybug replaced the file and I clicked the lock shut. "This has been extraordinarily unhelpful," I said as we used her yo-yo to exit back through the skylight and onto the roof.

"Maybe," she said thoughtfully. "But the lack of information tells us something, too." She turned back toward me. "Do you even remember when he joined our school?" she asked.

That gave me pause. "No," I said after giving it some thought. "You?"

"No," she concurred. "He's never made a connection, with anyone. Or anything."

My eyes widened. "And as a consequence, likely feels like the world doesn't understand him."

"And that will make him very, very difficult to deal with." She leaned into me. "So, not a waste."

I stifled a yawn. "And maybe we confirmed where he will be," I pointed to the paper still in her hand.

"Yes." She yawned too. "I think we've done as much as we can tonight. Let's get home."

Together we headed back to the mansion, the streets even emptier than when we'd headed out. Rena was still in position, and she confirmed it had been quiet. "In fact, I think Carapace is actually snoring down there," she added, wincing at something that came through her earwig.

I laughed. "The bed _is_ comfortable," I said, waggling my eyebrows at Ladybug. "Maybe-" I started, a bit lecherously.

"_Good_night, Chat," she said quickly, kissing me deeply to prevent the end of my sentence.

I returned the embrace, hugged Rena, and double flipped off the roof, bounced on the fence and through the window into the bathroom, closing it behind me. I stealthily crept into the bedroom, using my night vision to confirm that Carapace had indeed zonked out, but on the couch. I gently shook him awake.

"Chat?" he said sleepily. "Did I fall asleep?"

"We'll talk about that later," I said. "Rena's waiting for you outside. Thanks again, buddy."

We fist pumped and I helped him to the window; Carapace had some trouble with leaps, so I carefully extended my baton across to the roof where Ladybug waited so he could shimmy his way to safety. Once I'd confirmed all three of them had left, I closed the window, somersaulted over the couch and landed perfectly on my back in my bed.

_I think I did gymnastics in another life_, I thought as a took one last look around the room as Chat. "Plagg – claws in!"

Plagg flew out of the ring. "What a night!" he complained. "Neither of us really ate, either!"

"I'm too tired to care," I said sleepily as I shed my street clothes for a comfortable pair of sleeping pants and a sleeveless t-shirt and crawled into bed.

"Whatever," he said. I saw his glowing eyes turn away and head toward his stash. The last thing I heard before Morpheus found me was the telltale sound of aluminum foil being ripped…

* * *

**AN: That was close with Gabriel, wasn't it? And Michael has to come up for air soon, right? Especially given we're in the final stretch for this adventure - three parts to go!  
**

**(Thank you for allowing me a tiny bit of liberty with Rena's Mirage ability. I _feel_ like it's plausible, and it gave me an interesting opportunity to expand the family - and a cool way for Chat to escape detection.)**


	8. Having A Ball

**AN: As stated earlier, the author has made some intuitive assumptions about the MLB universe based on how it stood at the end of Season Two, and wrote the entirety of the _Sweethearts Ball_ adventure before seeing any information about Season Three. It has since come to their attention that those insights are close to plot lines that will air in Season Three (and, for that matter, consumer goods that are now on sale in Europe).**

**If you fear that you might ruin your enjoyment of Season Three, the author suggests pausing here and returning once those episodes are available. (Don't worry, we'll wait.)  
**

**Otherwise, you have been warned... **

* * *

Something was flicking at my nose.

I swam up through the haze of slumber to find myself staring at two glowing green eyes, and the tiny paw that kept tweaking my nose. "Get up," he said quietly.

I cracked open the second eye. The bedroom was still dark. "What time is it?" I asked

"One thirty or something," Plagg said. "Hurry," he prompted, pulling back the sheet to encourage me up.

"What's wrong?" I asked. I felt like a truck had run over me. Twice. "One thirty? That's like..." I tried to do the math in my fuzzy head, "...less than an hour of sleep…!" I mewled, channeling my very unhappy inner cat.

_Some cat I am. I barely get five hours on a good night._

"Ladybug has been trying to reach you," Plagg was saying. "Both ways."

My phone was in the dock, and showed multiple missed calls from Marinette. I must have gone down hard not to have heard it. I looked pointedly at Plagg. "How do you know she called Chat?"

"Who do you think runs the phone for you when you're transformed?" he replied shortly. "I don't say this often, Adrien. But transform already."

I ran a hand through my hair and yawned massively. I was in sorry shape. "Plagg – claws out!"

If it was even possible, it felt like the transformation process happened at three times normal speed. Plagg was seriously worried. I pulled the baton from its resting place and slid open the phone. It didn't have to ring – Ladybug was staring at me already. "Thank God, Chat. I've been trying to reach you."

"Sorry, LB," I yawned again, possibly exposing my canines this time. "I crumpled right after we parted."

"Well, we've got a new problem," she said without preamble. "Ayla's mom called me. She never returned home."

"_What_?" I was wide awake now.

"So I called Nino, assuming he'd escorted her. He didn't answer, which worried me enough to transform and pay him a visit." She paused. "He never made it home, either." Ladybug looked as tired as I felt. "It didn't help my mental state when you didn't answer, kitty."

"Sorry, milady," I said, eyes wide.

"Well, it gets worse. When I returned to the Bakery, Officer Raincomprix was there talking to my parents. I managed to change back and be in bed when they 'woke' me to say that he'd told them our classmates have vanished into thin air this evening." She paused. "I was the first one he'd found at home, but he was on the way to check on you next."

"Sounds like a mixed blessing," I said. "If Adrien is 'missing' when he arrives, it'll be counted as part of the wider issue - whatever that might be." I quickly moved toward the bathroom, talking as I went. "I'm leaving now. Where do you want to meet?"

"Might as well come here. Can't hurt to have Chat Noir make the rounds, too. I'll change back and meet you topside."

"Hold that thought," I said. "This might be a case where we need Marinette to be visible."

"All right," she said. "I'll have coffee waiting when you get here."

"Purrfect," I sighed, already tasting the boutique blend her father specialized in. "A lifesaver as always, milady."

"Don't you forget it," she laughed as I clicked off.

I replaced the baton and hurled myself out the bedroom window, adrenaline wiping all traces of fatigue temporarily away. I bounded over the fence and into the night, only cursorily taking in the evening around me. It wasn't unusual for us to be working into the wee hours of the Paris morning, especially when chasing after a particularly thorny villain, but tonight my main concern was getting to Marinette and protecting her. A cold fear had wrapped itself around my heart when she'd told me our friends had disappeared, and I instinctively knew the game had begun with whatever villain Michael had become.

Marinette's rooftop patio appeared in the distance, lit with those party lights that warmed my soul each time I saw them. As I got closer, I could see she'd already put a thermos down on the small table she had there, with matching cups. I skipped my usual flamboyant entrance and dropped to all fours just to her side. "Milady, that smells divine," I purred.

_Yes,_ I thought. _I am purring. Over coffee._

Despite her worried eyes, she smiled and handed me a steaming mug as I stood up. I took a sip of the hot liquid, closing my masked eyes to savor the pure bliss of a fine, _fine _cup of coffee. It didn't hurt that my enhanced sense of taste as Chat had the exquisite flavor exploding across my tongue.

"I don't think anyone in Paris appreciates Dad's blend as much as you do, Chat," she observed.

I took another long sip. "Probably not," I replied, continuing to purr and making no attempt to stop. "All right," I continued after feeling a little more like myself, "I think Michael has made his first move."

"I agree," she said, sipping on her own mug.

I could smell the hideous amount of sugar she'd added and choked back a snarky comment. "I thought a bit about this as I came over. The obvious play is for us to head to the Grand Hotel; I'm feline like the action will take place there." I looked at her over my mug, eyes narrowed as I thought aloud. "I also pawsitive he's had enough time to think through what our reaction is likely to be - possibly with help from our old friend, Hawkmoth." I held out my mug for a refill.

Marinette uncorked the thermos and topped me off. "So far I'm with you," she concurred, adding, "but your puns are terrible tonight."

I raised a masked eyebrow. "Best I can do at two in the morning," I winked, then continued my thought. "I'm troubled that he made his move now, though," I said, taking in the exotic scent of the coffee with another long, appreciative sniff. "That's what's throwing me – I fully expected something dastardly at the actual Ball tonight."

She refilled her mug, then spooned in a massive quantity of sugar from the small bowl to the side of the thermos. I tried to keep my face impassive at the horror I'd witnessed. "I agree, but I also don't think we have a choice; if our friends and classmates are in danger, the odds are good they are being held at the hotel. And Michael, or whatever he has become, is there waiting for us."

"Exactly." I sipped again. "I think it's safe to assume we're going to get an engraved invitation to visit sometime soon, too, since it's not Hawkmoth's style to do these things on the down low." I leaned against the railing. "So, milady, what is our _real _plan?"

"We go to the Ball, you and I," she said simply, with a slight twinkle to her eye.

I tried not to look nonplussed. "That's the kind of plan _I_ would come up," I said. "Yours are normally more, shall we say, elegant." I frowned, slightly. "And, frankly, complicated."

She smiled, still looking tired. "We don't have enough info at this point," she said as she downed the last of what was in her mug. "I think this is going to be an improvised solution at best."

"Trust the Ladybug Luck, then?" I went to her and placed my hands on her shoulders. "That's never led us wrong."

"About that," she said. She picked up her purse, which was also sitting on the table, and clicked it open, allowing Tikki to fly out. "We've talked through this a bit, Tikki and I, and I need you to do something for me." She looked at me directly. "I think we need to keep a wild card handy, and Tikki made a very logical suggestion."

I looked over to the Kwami of Light. "Oooookay," I said. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"Oh, Chat," the little body laughed.

I turned back to Marinette, realization dawning. "Oh, no. _Hell _no."

"It's the best way to protect both of us," she said as she started to unfasten her earrings. Once she had them off, she stepped closer to me. "We have to assume the end goal here is to capture the Miraculouses," she said. "And we also have to assume that Michael is likely going to use me – as Marinette – to pressure you – as Chat Noir."

She reached up toward my left human ear and I quickly gripped her wrist, stopping her. "There's no way I'm letting you in there without your powers," I growled. "Besides," I pointed out, using my other hand to pull back the hair covering my ear, "my ears aren't even pierced!"

Marinette disentangled herself from my grip and in a quick motion snagged my exposed earlobe. I felt a cold metallic sensation as the earring affixed itself, mirroring the deep dread of realization that she'd made up her mind and there was no changing it. "This is temporary," she said as she repeated the operation on my right ear. "No one will be able to see these," she said as she carefully tousled my hair again, re-hiding my human ears, "since your mane is so wild anyway."

I frowned, not at all liking this. "Father is going to have a conniption."

Tikki was still floating nearby. "Don't worry, Chat. The Ladybug Magic will restore you when this is all over."

I looked down at her. "Wait, wait, wait just a damn second! Does that make you _my _kwami now? Is that even possible?"

"Such language, Chat," Tikki laughed.

I looked back at Marinette, who was nodding. A sudden mental image of my suave and eminently cool glossy black Chat Noir outfit swapping out for that red-and-black polka dotted number of Ladybugs popped up and I groaned. Loudly. "Oh, Hell. I take back everything I ever said on the subject. This is now my worst nightmare."

"Not yet," Marinette whispered as she leaned in to kiss me. "Try to think of this as safe storage, until I need them back." She paused. "I can't think of anyone else I would trust this to."

I mewled this time. "No pressure," I complained.

"Now we wait," she said. "But if you excuse me for a moment, I'm going to change."

"Into _what_?" I said acidly, resisting the temptation to point to the frigging earrings I was now wearing.

"My gown, silly kitty," she said as she trailed a finger along my shoulder. "You wouldn't want me to be underdressed for the Ball, now would you?"

I grumbled but had the good sense to keep it to myself, and watched as she disappeared through the skylight. I turned back and found Tikki was still by my side, patiently waiting. "Well," I said mirthlessly. "I have no idea where to put you, having never needed to house a kwami while transformed."

She fluttered around me, pensive. "I'm not a fan of the storage area in the baton," she said. "It could be separated from you too easily."

"Storage area?" I said blankly. "What storage area?" I pulled the baton from my back and looked it over with new eyes. I thought I had figured out all of the magic in it, and had never seen a storage locker.

"Hit the third pad and the center of the paw print at the same time," Tikki said.

I did, and the bottom of the baton slid down, mirroring how the phone popped up, revealing a tiny storage area. I looked back at her, eyes wide. "Any other secrets I should know?"

"Yes, but not right now," she replied, still fluttering around me, before finally stopping at one of my front pockets. "This will do," she said as she took the zipper in her tiny hand and pulled.

"Tikki – that's-"

Before I could finish, she'd flown into the pocket and closed the zipper behind her. Prior to that moment, I would've assumed there was next to no space in there – enough for a card or a key, maybe, but not a kwami. Then again, the costume was as magical as the rest, so why should I be surprised she could get in there? "Uh, okay," I said, feeling her slight movements. "As long as you're comfortable…"

"I'm good, Chat!" came the muffled cheerful voice.

I triggered the baton and closed the storage area just as Marinette returned to the roof. I was placing the baton on my back when I turned and saw her, dropping both the baton and my jaw in the process.

The dress was as stunning as I thought it would be, cascading in light white chiffon waves along the natural lines of her body, gently but appropriately accentuating what was already (in my mind) a very attractive figure. Her hard work on the bell motif shone through even in the less desirable lighting on the patio, shimmering in offsetting black when she swished the fabric as she walked. She'd accessorized it with white gloves that ran to above her elbow, and had completed the effect by carefully piling her hair up in several waves, with a few ringlets elegantly framing that sensual face.

All that was missing was the tiara.

She stopped a few feet from me, a wry expression on her face, before reaching over and closing my gaping mouth. In her other hand were sensible but lovely heels. "I'm going to put these on once we get there," she said when she saw me look to them incredulously. "I'd rather not poke you while we're flying through the sky."

"Very thoughtful of you, milady," I said, trying, and failing, not to go all mushy inside.

Marinette's eyes snapped to a spot over my shoulder; I didn't have to turn around to know what she'd seen. The night had burst into day, with a brilliant shower of fireworks. She came to my side and I pivoted to confirm what I'd already known: they were emanating from the Grand Hotel.

"Engraved invitation?" I asked, raising a masked eyebrow at my partner.

"Seems like it." She turned to me. "Ready?"

"No," I said honestly. "But 'I am therefore going anyway.'"

She cocked an eyebrow. "Are you quoting a movie back to me?"

"Maybe," I smiled slightly.

"You're not going to tell me, are you," she said as I wrapped my arm very gently around her dress, trying not to crush the flowing folds.

"If we survive this, there is a little movie marathon you are going to owe me."

She pressed herself into my chest, wrapping both arms around me. "Deal."

I extended the baton and leapt into the night, over the alley and onto the next roof, running carefully so as to keep those heels from digging into my back. It wasn't very far to the hotel as the crow flies, and I gently leapt to a tall flagpole just outside the main entrance, snagging it with my free hand and swinging around it several times before gracefully landing at its base with my precious cargo. Marinette leaned on my shoulder as she slid her heels on, and then we moved up the steps to the main entrance.

Not surprisingly, the doors had been slid wide open, and not a soul was in sight. I cautiously entered the lobby, keeping Marinette behind me as I scanned the space. It was completely empty and unusually dimly lit, though my night vision was making short work of that. I could see the reason why, though. Along the far end of the grand space was a double set of doors leading to the Grand Ballroom; they were open, and a spray of changing lights were cascading through them.

"I think the party has officially started," I said, pointing to the door with a claw.

"Yes," Marinette said. The way she said it made me turn sharply; as I watched, a corsage was fading into existence, pinned directly over her bell motif on her waist. In the hand I was not holding, a gilded invitation was similarly appearing, glittering in the dim light. She flipped it up and we could both clearly read it.

"Admit one: Marinette Dupain-Chang," Marinette said out loud. "And Chat, I can't remove it from my hand." She demonstrated by attempting to pull it out her grasp. It acted as though it had been superglued to her palm.

"Lovely." My eyes narrowed and I took a stab at trying to remove the floral arrangement. It had no visible means of attachment to her dress, though, so I wasn't able to remove it short of using Cataclysm. And I was just disgusted enough to do it. "I don't like this," I growled.

Marinette caught my look and turned my face toward her. "Chat, this is what I was talking about earlier. Dealing with this akuma may be more psychological that physical - he'll be preying on our emotions. Keep that in mind."

I nodded, tamping down my emotions. We headed across the space toward our designated entrance, though I continued to be on high alert. At the door, I pressed myself to the edge and tried to peek around the corner without drawing too much attention.

The vast ballroom was overflowing with colorful bunting, floral displays and a massive dance floor ringed by round tables that could hold up to eight. Computerized dance lighting was bathing the space in rotating colors, giving my night vision fits. Buffet tables had been set to the far corners of the space, and were loaded with sugary goods reflective of a Bosch-like painting warning about gluttony. At the front was the stage for the house band, though it was empty save for the emcee stand. Electro music pulsed from an unseen source.

"Chat," Marinette breathed. She'd come around to my side and was looking at the space too. "The seats… the dance floor…"

I nodded. We'd found our missing classmates, all right. At least, we appeared to have. Sugary figurines in the sizes and shapes of our friends were sprinkled throughout the ballroom; some were "dancing" on the floor, others were at the buffet, with the rest in various poses at the round tables. No one was actually moving, though through a trick of the lighting, I thought I'd initially seen activity. It was an eerie wax museum, entirely made out of sugar.

Carefully, I slid into the space and moved to the table closest to the door, still keeping Marinette behind me. Kim and his girlfriend were there, or at least, a highly accurate confectionary version of him and his signature flipped hair bangs. I snapped a finger and didn't get a reaction from him or his date. "Some kind of stasis?"

Marinette had circled to the side of me, where Luka was leaning back in a chair, eyes staring nowhere. She gently tapped at his upraised arm. "I can't tell if this is just a coating, or if they have been completely transformed into confections."

"Brings a new meaning to 'Sweethearts Ball,'" I said with trademark Chat Noir snark. I sniffed what passed for his arm and grimaced. "It's definitely some form of sugar; heavily refined white, if I'm not mistaken. But I can't scent anything vaguely human," I said, frowning. "I vote they've somehow been transformed."

We moved through the entire space, Marinette's heels clicking as we went, and verified everyone was accounted for, save for Michael. At length we wound up at the emcee stand, looking back across the dance floor.

"Am I the only one who finds it ominous that our host has yet to make an appearance?" I said rhetorically.

"Nope," she said, eyes also scanning the space. "But remember what I keep saying-"

My ears twitched and my head snapped around in time to see the massive ballroom doors slam closed. Without thinking, I bounded to the dance floor, bounced up to swing off the hanging lights and drop in front of the doors, simply to verify they had been jammed shut from the outside. The heavy scent of sugar allowed me to infer that the handles on the exterior were now frozen just like my classmates. "Blocked," I said over my shoulder.

I quickly leapt around the perimeter of the ballroom and found that all of the exits had similarly been blocked. "Well," I said, turning back to Marinette. "Looks like—"

_Oh my GOD! NO!_

Another shot of adrenaline hit my system and I bounded back to the emcee stage, growling in anger as I flew through the air toward the podium.

_No! No! NO!_

I landed in my cat squat next to her. Marinette was still there, but wasn't. In the few seconds I had turned my back, she, too, had become another decoration in this crazy confectionary museum. It had caught her in motion, lifting her dress to step down off the edge of the platform, eyes turned toward the direction I had initially gone and the ballroom exit. The multicolored lights were refracting off of the sugar crystals that had completely replaced My Lady, giving her the same illusion of movement the rest of the statues had appeared to have.

In her left hand, she still held the invitation. I scanned the room again, and realized that everyone else was also holding a similar five by three card; that had to be the trigger.

_Why didn't I see that? The one time she needed me to watch out for her, and I've screwed it up, big time._

Now I was entirely on my own.

No plan, no partner.

I looked around the room again, feeling a creeping sense of doom crawling up my spine.

_No hope?_

"Princess," I said quietly, leaning my head against her dress. "I'm so sorry…"

* * *

**AN: Still here? I had a feeling you might not resist continuing. Now that the Ball is underway, Chat seems to be in need of a miracle...**


	9. Dance for the Piper

**AN: As stated earlier, the author has made some intuitive assumptions about the MLB universe based on how it stood at the end of Season Two, and wrote the entirety of the _Sweethearts Ball_ adventure before seeing any information about Season Three. It has since come to their attention that those insights are close to plot lines that will air in Season Three (and, for that matter, consumer goods that are now on sale in Europe).**

**If you fear that you might ruin your enjoyment of Season Three, the author suggests pausing in Chapter 7 and returning once those episodes are available. (Don't worry, we'll wait.)  
**

**Otherwise, you have been warned... **

* * *

I'm not certain how long I sat next to Marinette.

I was fuming at my failure to protect her, tempered somewhat by my growing fear that I might not be able to save her or my friends and classmates. I was well aware of what Marinette had referred to earlier, and concurred that the lack of appearance of our nemesis was designed to get under my collar. I had to admit, it already had, but I felt like I was ahead of the game by realizing that; the alone time I was experiencing was supposed to get into my head and I was stubbornly determined not to let it throw me off my game.

_Whatever that might be_, I thought morosely.

I'd be foolish to ignore the effect it was having on me, but working with Ladybug had taught me how to deal with these sorts of curveballs, and in most cases, how to turn them to our advantage. So, given that I apparently had the time, I started working with the old whiteboard of the mind, trying to diagram out where to go from here.

My first priority was to try and smoke out the akuma. Until I knew what I was dealing with, there was no point in trying to come up with a plan to disable it and release everyone from its effects. I had some thoughts about how to do that, which brought a crafty smile to my face for the first time that morning - definitely a plus one for the cat column.

My second priority was to somehow prevent myself from coming under the influence of the akuma; I figured there wasn't much I could do there, other than to lean into the fact that they needed Chat Noir as Chat Noir and not a sugary kitty. I also had to assume they would try to use _me_ to get to Ladybug, and since they had no way to know that they already _had _her, I could use that to my potential advantage. That added another plus to my column.

My third priority was to change the playing field. I had to assume the ballroom was a home court, conferring its advantage to the akuma and not me. That was going to prove trickier, since short of using Cataclysm, I was just as trapped as everyone else in the ballroom. And the hero in me was also unwilling to leave them at risk, something I also knew the akuma would be counting on. So, if I couldn't _change _the playing field, maybe there was a way to _tilt _it more in my favor...?

I scanned the space again, my mind running various options, and was temporarily blinded – again – by one of the annoying party lights.

_Ah-hah, _I thought, the first tendrils of a plan starting to emerge.

I looked back at the main doors to the ballroom and something else clicked as well, causing me to look back at Marinette (I had to still think it was her beneath all of those empty calories) and smile with that Cheshire grin I reserved only for milady. "Purrfect as always, bugaboo." I looked up at the lights again, murmuring. "As always..."

Grabbing my baton, I rose up to the lighting rig and grabbed onto the latticework holding it, pulling myself on top of it. Making some mental calculations, I pivoted one of the bigger lights to shine on the main entrance, but not before ripping the cover off the control compartment and inelegantly squeezing the life out of the computer-controlled alignment motor. There was something wonderful about hearing the plastic snap and fall to the floor below; I had to have been channeling Plagg and his more aggressive destruction tendencies at that moment.

"'Definitely feeling aggressive tendencies,'" I quietly quoted to myself.

_What a geek,_ I could hear Ladybug saying in my mind.

"I wear it proudly," I replied to the air, as I swung around the first part of the light rigging, smashing each of the LED emitters with my baton as I went, then leapt to the each of the remaining rigs in turn and repeated the process. My anger made short work of it, and I finished by dropping to the side of the main doors to verify I'd aligned the one remaining, functioning spot, where I wanted it.

"Purrfect," I hummed.

Save for that one bright white light, the rest of the room had been plunged into darkness. I dove into a tuck-and-roll and leapt back to the stage area, my now-useful night vision searching for the main control panel for the space. It was hiding behind a small foldable partition, which I tore apart with another growl; I slammed my claws into the metal cover and ripped it away from the wall, exposing the breakers that controlled the normal electrical aspects of the room.

I scanned the settings and with the help of my baton (safety first!) carefully shorted out anything connected to the lights, chandeliers or wall sconces in the room. Then, just for good measure, I took out anything that appeared to be part of the sound system, finally killing off the horrific electronica track that had been getting on my last nerve.

_Beautiful silence_, I thought.

Stealthily I returned to the side of Marinette. In night-vision mode, it was almost possible to convince myself she was normal. "All right, Princess," I said quietly. "I think I know what to do."

I felt movement from my pocket and jumped, having totally forgotten about TIkki. "You're on the right track, Chat," I heard a muffled voice say approvingly. I decided I was going to need to talk to Ladybug about how much sharing she apparently did with her kwami, possibly in an effort to get some pointers. Aside from conferring on cheese, Plagg hardly ever wanted to chit-chat with me.

"Thanks," I whispered as I snapped open the phone on the baton. It was close to three now; that meant I'd been on ice (or was that icing?) for ninety minutes. I wasn't entirely sure what was in the evildoer's handbook but figured we were possibly reaching the definitive moment when my nemesis finally appeared. I settled back into cat stance and waited patiently for a few swishes of my tail before implementing my plan for Priority One.

"I'm not sure why you are so upset," I said, falling into my butter-would-melt-smoothly Chat voice. "You've obviously heard the rumors about me." I scanned the room again. "And it's all true," I acknowledged, grinning my best don't-you-wish-you-were-me smile. "I have, as they say, a girl in every port."

I stood up, and started to casually swing my tail in one hand. That always seemed to drive villains wild, but in truth it felt vaguely uncomfortable to do. I kept smiling as I started across the dance floor. "Yep, been there," I said, pointing to one female classmate, "done that," I continued by pointing to another. "And that, and that, and that," I said, pointing to more classmates as I rounded the floor and returned to Marinette.

"This one," I said, framing her with both hands, "was just the latest in a long line of conquests for this Catsanova." I smiled and forced a purr as I rubbed my head against her crystalized hair. "Amazing, isn't she? I couldn't believe my luck that fool Adrien had dropped the ball."

Tikki poked me. _Oops, bridge too far?_

I circled back to my main point. "Anyway, the important thing is that none of these mean _anything _to me. There is only one woman for this Chat, and it's Ladybug. You can do what you want with Marinette-"

"_Liar_!" a voice boomed through the space, flattening my ears in the process. "I saw the two of you, with my own _eyes_!"

_There it is, _I thought, swallowing back my anxiety to maintain my act. "Appearances can be deceiving," I offered to the air, still twirling the tail and trying not to grimace as I did so, "and I am pretty good at deception." I bowed slightly. "Black cat, after all. It's one of our specialties."

"_LIAR!_" came the voice again, louder and harsher. "You're all bluster, trying to hide that compassion you so cavalierly show with all of these people – especially Marinette!"

_Progress._ "I'm flattered that you think so -"

"It's your greatest weakness," the voice continued unabated. "And I am about to use it against you."

_He's right about that,_ I thought, gaining another insight into what was about to happen next. Another plus to the Chat for seeing it.

I turned expectantly to the double doors and was not surprised to see them flung open. "Tikki," I said quietly, "now would be a good time to tell me you can call the Lucky Charm on your own."

"I can," came the muffled voice, "but I can't de-evilize the akuma. Only a fully transformed Miraculous Ladybug holder can do that."

"You're not saying what I _think_ you are saying, are you?" I whispered, eyes still firmly planted on the doorway. A spectral apparition had started to form from waves of sugar that had strangely started flowing in from parts unknown.

"I am," Tikki replied.

"I'm already transformed!" I hissed.

"Yes," she said. "Think of it like aqua or ice mode," she continued. "It'll layer on top of your current abilities."

"Ladybug and I are going to have a long, _long _discussion when this is over," I sighed.

"Don't worry," she said cheerfully (though muffled). "Plagg and I have done this before."

"_Long_ discussion," I repeated, turning my attention fully to the door.

Something close to Michael had appeared, but he was clearly covered in the same crystal-like substance. It was far more realistic looking, though, and he remained more humanesque than his victims despite the shimmering layers moving as he did; he looked almost as if he weren't really substantive - just swirling bands of colored sugar carefully held together for the moment. I decided to test my theory and retrieved my baton, broke it into catamarangs and deftly threw them at Michael in one swift motion.

The sugar bands simply parted to let them pass through and back again to my waiting hands.

I couldn't help but smile. "Not all there, are you?" I said snarkily as I started to crouch into my battle stance. "Not surprising, really," I added, waving to the crowd. "Fur what it's worth, this amount of sugar could lead to serious health issues, like diabetes. You really ought to have that checked out."

He paused at the doorway, what passed for a scary smile on his face. "You're not that funny, you know."

"I've been told that," I replied, carefully circling away from Marinette as he started toward me, trying to keep what might be a safe distance and knowing full well that those streams of sugar could cross the room in a flash. "You might as well tell me what you're calling yourself, Michael," I sighed loudly. "Hawkmoth's victims always do." I looked up at the ceiling, shrugging with one arm. "It's like a rite of passage now."

Michael smiled again, a very scary prospect. "Not as smart as you think, are you? I'm somewhat surprised – I thought it would be obvious, even to a mangy alley cat like you."

_Name calling. Check._ "My apologies," I said, continuing to circle the dance floor as he passed along the far axis. He was no longer in the spotlight, but that didn't matter; my night vision wasn't having any trouble following him. "You've kept me up way past my bedtime, so I'm nearly catatonic..." I paused again, smile growing wider. "...Sweetheart."

I was rewarded with a mirthless cackle. "Very good, cat." Sweetheart waved his arms at the space expansively. "Welcome to _my _Ball."

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but there's no apostrophe in 'Sweethearts,''" I said, putting a clawed finger to my chin. "It's a common grammatical mistake -"

"Grammar is the least of your worries, cat," he interrupted loudly as he thrust his arms back toward me.

I'd expected something like that and shot up to the light rigging I'd carefully positioned myself beneath, but I was almost a split second too late despite my feline reflexes. A massive stream of sugar piled up where I'd been a fraction of a moment earlier, then twisted up and nearly nailed me on the rigging.

I rolled over the edge and used it to fling myself toward the massive chandelier in the center of the room, catching it one handed and looping up to the highest portion. "What?" I said. "No witty response?" I leapt from the chandelier toward the far light rigging. "Chat got your – oof!"

Halfway across the space, a lucky shot nailed me and I crashed to the floor, sputtering sugar. Within a few seconds, I'd become partially buried in the sticky stuff, the weight of which made it nearly impossible to push through. With a loud roar, I managed to spring out from beneath it and onto the wall of the ballroom, using my claws to scrabble sideways and away from the spray.

"You don't even know enough to stay down when you're beaten, cat," Sweetheart said. "Suit yourself."

He trained the sugar firehose on me again, knocking me off the wall and into the buffet table I'd been hovering over. I rolled beneath the table, hearing it groan as the sugar piled up and over it, wondering if it would hold long enough for me to consider my next move – assuming I had one. I carefully lifted the tablecloth on the opposite side of the table, and saw what I was hoping to see.

_Next phase_, I thought. _Here goes nothing._

The stream of sugar subsided. I lifted up the tablecloth and came out, holding my paws in the air. "All right, all right," I said somewhat testily. "I get it, you're going to keep chasing me around this room until you wind up succeeding in burying me," I said, warily keeping an eye on Sweetheart.

"Look, I'm feline reasonable today," I continued, hands still up. "No one else needs to get hurt. Tell me what it's going to take to return all of these people to normal." I made a show of yawning. "Then we can all crawl back into bed and get some rest."

"I don't agree at all, Chat Noir," Sweetheart said darkly. "I think I need to hurt just _one _more person before we discuss terms." He paused. "Hurt just as badly as I was."

I didn't like the sound of that and held my hand out in a stop motion. "Now, wait just a minute -"

He blasted me up against the wall I'd been keeping to my back, dumping what felt like tons of sugar on me. I tried to move out of the onslaught, but the force of the blast pinned me back until the physical weight of the pile did the same. When the stream subsided for the final time, I was buried up to my neck in the stuff and feeling just a little bit compressed. The sickly sweet smell of sugar was everywhere and made me just a tad nauseated. It had been my ring hand that I'd been trying to wave him off with, and it was now conveniently peeking out from the pile of sugar, exposed from the wrist up.

_Whoops,_ I thought, trying not to smile and instead donning a panicked expression, darting my eyes toward the now very attractive prize on my finger.

Tikki made a movement in my pocket, and though I couldn't get to her, I took it as a sign that she was okay, at least for the moment. "All right," I said, somewhat haltingly as I struggled to breath under the crushing weight of the sugar. "You've gotten my... attention. I'm... all ears."

Sweetheart smiled that terribly cruel smile again, and turned toward the doorway. The spotlight was still on, and it glittered across the red-and-black polka dotted costume of Ladybug, who was standing there with a gigawatt smile. "Come closer, darling," Sweetheart said.

It didn't take any acting on my part for my eyes to snap wide when I saw her. "Lady...bug?" I breathed.

Ladybug moved through the room and came to his side, smiling the entire time; from my position, it was hard to tell exactly, but she looked almost as human as Sweetheart did when the sugar bands weren't vacillating. "My love," I heard her say, with all of the emotion I knew she could use in such a sentence.

"What... did you do... to her!" I growled, making an effort to try and claw my way through the sugar. It was fruitless – there was too much on me to move through sheer physical means.

"Everything that you didn't," he replied coldly. "Respect. Dignity. The love she deserves, not some childish fantasy of desire." Sweetheart ran a finger along Ladybug's cheek, and she snuggled into his movement. "Most of all, a partner who will be there for her." He turned back to me, eyes haunting. "Unlike _you_, Chat Noir."

"Ladybug!" I cried out. "It's some... kind... of mind... control! Snap out... of it...!"

"You don't exist for her anymore, cat. And soon, you won't exist at all."

He moved toward me, Ladybug close on his heels. "You asked what price I wanted to save all of these students?" Sweetheart expansively waved. "You've paid part of it already, having failed in your mission to protect your classmates." He smiled thinly. "At last, I can't be ignored any longer, shoved in the corner to be forgotten about." He looked back at me. "You needed to know that _I _did this. Without any help."

"Not... exactly... true," I said, trying for Chat Noir snark despite being unable to breath. "Hawkmoth..."

"All he did was unlock the power I already had within!" he thundered as he stepped closer and bent down to my ring finger.

_Wow. Delusional now, too._

"Renounce your Miraculous, and let me show the world the actual weakling hiding beneath that mask who was too afraid to tell Ladybug how he really felt. Once I've exposed you for the fraud you are, then, and _only _then, will I restore everyone to their normal form."

"Ladybug would never... agree... to..." I rasped. It was getting really difficult to breath. What was it with that this week? _Three _times now.

"Ah, but she already has," he crowed as he turned back to Ladybug. As he did so, she started to reach up toward her earrings, preparatory toward removing them. "She wants to be with _me_, Chat Noir, no matter what guise she wears," he smiled smugly.

_I doubt that very much, _I thought.

"You should thank me, actually," Sweetheart continued, the smug smile getting larger. "She never loved you anyway; she tried to tell you, multiple times. 'My true love is elsewhere,' I think was what she told you."

I tried not to betray my surprise, for that was one tidbit I hadn't expected to come across. Since that particular conversation was seared into my memory, I knew there could be only one source for the information Sweetheart seemed to have come into possession of.

There were but two possibilities.

Father had somehow shared the recordings with Hawkmoth.

Father _was_ Hawkmoth.

I was predisposed to presume the second option was not possible, especially since we'd witnessed Gabriel Agreste become akumatized (and subsequently saved him). But having successfully managed to convince people that I was not Chat Noir proved that a little bit of misdirection could go a long way.

The first option was almost as bad. That would mean, somehow, Father or someone on his team had been or currently was working with Hawkmoth. I supposed there was an outside chance that Hawkmoth had somehow hacked into the IT systems at the mansion, but why he'd be spying on the Agrestes was a bit of a mystery to me.

I'd have to deal with that thorny issue later.

"Okay... okay... damn you..." I said with as much anger as I could muster, which was turning out to be pretty easy, actually. "You... win."

Sweetheart smiled, turned and planted a searing kiss on Ladybug; she reciprocated, and I tried very hard not to vomit on the spot.

"On second thought," he said. "I don't want her!" He turned on his heel and pulverized Ladybug with a massive burst of sugar, her screams echoing in the space as she was blasted out of existence.

It was a suitably rattling experience that I roared in protest, as much as I was able, while trying to pull myself out of the grasp of the pile I was in. When he was finished and had turned around to gloat, I was already hanging my head despondently. I might have even managed to get a tear to roll out of one of my green eyes.

"'You bastard,'" I quoted. "'You've... killed my... dessert!'"

Okay, _technically _I was paraphrasing. But he didn't need to know that and it sounded pretty good to me given the circumstances.

Sweetheart blinked. "Not the response I was expecting," he said in what was perhaps the first truthful moment between us.

"I'm... full... of... surprises," I said, finally having wriggled the baton into position. "I don't... believe in the... 'no win' scenario. And… now, Tikki...!"

There was a muffled voice and then the room was filled with the red blast of light denoting the arrival of the Lucky Charm. It dropped just in front of me and was exactly what I expected to see: a massive wind machine, similar to what was used on movie sets to simulate hurricanes and other bad weather (save for the neat polka-dot motif). As the massive fan started to whirr, I finally triggered the baton and it smashed its way through the sugar, obliterating the air conditioning thermostat directly behind me in a shower of sparks and shorting the system into action.

Sweetheart stared at me, unable to register what was happening. That was all the time I needed: I shifted the baton slightly against the wall and triggered vault mode, allowing me to push myself out of the pile of sugar in a single burst. I rolled into a tuck and took off for the far side of the room, trailing sugar as it cascaded out of the strangest places of my costume. I heard the mechanics of the air conditioning crank up as I jumped to a wall and scampered vertically around the perimeter of the room, trying to stay a step ahead of the blasts of sugar heading my way. I had a fifty/fifty shot of either getting the lowest temperature or highest after shorting. Immediately I knew I'd gotten frigid as the room precipitously started to quickly drop into the Antarctic zone.

Sweetheart had started to follow me, but as I had also anticipated, the swirling wind coming from the Ladybug wind machine was making it hard for him to stay in form. As he started to turn back to the fan in an attempt to disable it, I came around from behind and lopped off the bottom half of his "body" with an extended baton swing, causing him to drop to the floor.

"Feeling let down?" I asked as I backed away.

I knew it was temporary, and could see him pulling sugar back to reform himself. But it gave me time to determine where the akuma might be hiding.

"Save your questions until the end," I said as I whacked at his raised arm, and it atomized into sugar, blown away by the fan he'd been trying to reach.

Nothing seemed obvious; what would have been in his possession at the time Hawkmoth found him? Twirling the baton, I shortened him again, and as I'd hoped, the simple chemistry of cooling the space was making it harder and harder for him to repair the damage. I thanked the gods backing Chat Noir that I was something of a science nerd.

I bounced around to the front of Sweetheart, whose face writhed in anger as he forcefully tried to pull himself out of the wind tunnel I'd created. That was when I finally saw it: clutched in his hand, two small, now purple, five by three cards. Each person in our class had received two copies of the official invitation, one for us and one for our potential date. He appeared to still have his set and must have been obsessing over them when he'd heard about Chat Noir and Marinette and had been transformed by Hawkmoth.

I extended the baton again, reared back, and swung as hard as I could: "He swings…!"

I connected and unlike the rest of Sweetheart, the cards felt very real. In fact, the baton bent slightly in the effort to dislodge them from his hand, but my feline-enhanced swing came through and they popped out.

"He connects!" I cried as I followed through and sent the cards flying to the far end of the ballroom. "Can they get it before it leaves the field?!" I hollered as I shrunk the baton and bounded into the air, hit the buffet table with both feet, paused only to grab the punch bowl and leapt again, diving to hold the bowl just below the falling cards. They hit what little liquid I'd not spilled carrying it over and stayed put.

Sweetheart was still stuck in front of the fan, and now was _seriously_ pissed. I watched in fascination as he managed to wrestle himself in my direction, albeit slowly, redirecting the billowing clouds of sugar back into restoring him. I had maybe a minute before he'd reach me and potentially be back to full strength.

I looked down at the soggy invitations, considering what to do next. Cataclysm would release the akuma, but I needed Ladybug Magic to clear the room.

"Tikki," I started. "Are you strong enough to move to the next part of my devious plan?"

She unzipped the pocket and fluttered out. "Barely," she said. "I can keep you transformed for a few minutes, but that's it."

"I'll take it," I said.

The kwami smiled and for a moment looked just like Marinette to me. "All you have to say is -"

Despite the situation, I found myself smiling. "I know," I said gently. "Tikki - spots on!"

We'd used our sub-transformations a few times now, so I wasn't unfamiliar with the process of transforming-while-transformed. But this felt very different as Ladybug's familiar red flash enveloped me and washed over my body; when it faded, I was pleasantly surprised that my costume had maintained its fashion sense. I now had stylized red dots tastefully placed here and there, all ringed in white, standing out brilliantly against the black fabric I was used to seeing. I wriggled my ears, saw claws at the end of my fingers and felt my tail was still in place, confirming I'd melded the two Miraculouses into one.

More importantly, I was now also holding the magical yo-yo in my other hand.

_Now that's more like it._

I raised my hand, and shouted: "Cataclysm!" The power rushed to my fingers as it always had, and I quickly dragged my spotted claws across the two cards in the punch bowl. They quickly turned brown, then black, and as they dissolved into nothingness the little purple akuma fluttered out and tried to make a break for it.

"Oh no you _don't_," I said, flipping up the yo-yo and sliding it open to expose the brilliant white light as Ladybug had done a million times before. "Time to de-evilize!" I cried, spinning up the yo-yo and nabbing the little butterfly before it could get away. I'm not sure it was as elegant as Ladybug, but it _was _my first time in the part, after all. The yo-yo popped shut and the light faded.

I tapped the shell of the yo-yo and it cracked back open, allowing the pure white butterfly to escape. "Bye, bye, butterfly," I murmured as it floated away.

Sweetheart was a few feet from me when the spell broke; a wave of purple energy rolled over him, and returned him back to form as Michael. He was on all fours and looking very nonplussed. "Where am I?" he asked as I kneeled down beside him.

"You're safe," I said. "It's over."

"Chat... Noir?" he said, eyes wide as he took in the subtly different costume. "What happened?"

"One second," I said as I stood back up.

_One last thing to do. _I tossed the yo-yo in the air and closed out the magic: "Miraculous Ladybug!"

The red swarm of helpers burst out of the sky and swarmed the room. The ballroom was completely reset in preparation for the real Ball that would be taking place later, replete fully decorated tables, dance lights and set of buffet tables waiting for food. All traces of the sugar we'd been slogging through were swept up and disappeared into thin air; even the normal elevator music that played in the background of the space popped back into existence.

As the swarm continued, they swirled around my classmates and magically transported them back to wherever they had been when Sweetheart had nabbed them, hopefully with little to no memory of the experience. That had the added benefit of ensuring they hadn't witnessed my double transformation.

But my eyes immediately went to the stage, and I watched the bugs complete the magic by swirling themselves around Marinette, from her head to her toes. By the time I'd bounded to her side, she was breathing once more and about to miss her step as she came off the stage.

"Whoa-" she said as I caught her. "Chat?" she said, eyeing me closely, and stopping on a stylized dot on my chest. That smile quirked at me. "It worked, didn't it?"

"Yes, milady," I said as I hugged her as close as I could without squeezing the life out of her. "Yes, yes it did."

"So... you do love Marinette..." came a choked voice from behind me.

My eyes popped open and I gently released her, and turned back to Michael who was looking dangerously like he'd take another akuma if asked. I moved toward him.

"No," I lied as best as I could. "What I said on the Ladyblog is true: Ladybug is my partner and soulmate." I inclined my head back toward Marinette. "I obviously know Marinette, and we've become very close friends, but she has someone else in her life, and it's not Chat Noir."

_I can't believe I said that._

"Adrien." It was an observation.

"Yes," Marinette said as she stepped off the stage and down to Michael. As only she could do, she placed a compassionate hand on his shoulder and used the other to turn his face up toward hers. "I _am _in love with Adrien," she said gently, "but that doesn't mean I can't have others in my life." She looked to me. "Just like Chat Noir, I'd be happy to have you as one of my friends." She turned back to him again. "If you'll let me."

The earrings started to beep, and were joined by my ring. I glanced to Marinette with a _can-we-wrap-this-up-faster _look. She nodded fractionally.

"Look," she said, "there are more people than you know who care about you, Chat and Ladybug included. They never were your enemy," she added, "and neither was I."

He looked at her.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," she continued. "The waters of love can be..." she flicked her eyes to mine for a moment, "...hard to navigate and cruel at times. All I can tell you is, you rebound, and you keep trying." She caressed his face again and I stamped back the green-eyed monster. "There is someone out there for you, Michael. It's just not me."

This time, my ring chirped first, followed by the earrings. I nudged Marinette.

"Can I call your parents for you?" she asked as we all stood back up.

"No," Michael said. "I live close by and can walk." He looked like he was on more solid ground – not entirely healed, exactly, but with that spark of hope we all get when we realize the trail is still in front of us. "Thank you, Marinette," he said, and then he turned to me. "And you, Chat Noir. I'm sorry; I've misjudged you terribly."

"It happens a lot," I said magnanimously, though I was in truth feeling anything but. "Goes with the whole black cat thing. And it proves you can't believe everything you see on the internet," I added with a Chat wink.

I turned back to Marinette. "Might I run you back home, Princess?" I inquired.

"Thank you Chat, yes." She faced Michael one last time. "You're okay now?"

"Better," he said. "See you tonight?"

"Yes," Marinette said. "I think Chat might even allow you a dance with me."

"One," I said shorter than I'd intended, and then tried to soften it by chuckling. I could tell from Marinette's dour expression I'd failed miserably in that attempt. "Princess?" I held my hand meaningfully and she took it; together we moved quickly out of the ballroom and made for the lobby.

Past experience in this space reminded me that there was a supply closet just the side of the reception desk, and I headed in that direction with Marinette in tow. The door was unlocked and I scooted into the space; Marinette followed and pulled the door shut behind us

"Tikki, spots off!" I said, and the red glow enveloped me, restoring my normal Chat Noir outfit. As Tikki floated close by, Marinette reached up and removed each earring, replacing them in their rightful positions on her own ears.

My ring chirped the emergency chirps, and then I felt my own transformation reversing in a glow of green energy. Moments later, a very tired Plagg was huddled with Tikki, and I repeated the move with Marinette, drawing her into a snug embrace and burying my head in her hair.

"That was very uncomfortable for me," I whispered, feeling all of the emotions I'd been holding in check cascading out unabated. "I wasn't sure I could do it without you. And the chance I might lose you forever if I failed..." My voice caught and I swallowed. "I-"

She leaned up and kissed me. "I had faith," she said when she pulled back. "And I have always known you had my back." She kissed me again, helping to push away the crushing agony of despair I'd been feeling. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get a few hours of sleep."

"Of course, milady," I said as I fished some Camembert out of one pocket and handed it Plagg. In an uncharacteristic move, I watched as he split it in half and gave the other portion to Tikki, who grimaced but nonetheless downed the smelly cheese. I raised an eyebrow at Plagg, who steadfastly refused to meet my gaze.

_We'll talk about _that _later, my kwami friend._

I started to hold up my ring when Marinette put a hand on my arm. "You need some rest, too, kitty. I need you to be bright eyed and bushy tailed tonight."

My eyes narrowed, then opened wide. "I'm still going with you? As _Chat?"_

"A promise is a promise," she said, eyes twinkling.

"Plagg - claws out!" I cried, voice cracking in joy.

* * *

**AN: That was a very long chapter - sorry! - but I hope it still felt tightly paced. There is a lot to unpack in there and fallout our heroes will have to deal with in the future (oh yes, while this adventure is winding down, more are in the pipeline...). **

**If you are curious about the movie references Adrien keeps making, sources will be revealed in the next chapter so stay tuned. **


	10. Chat's Night Out

I don't know what time it was when I finally rolled through my bedroom window, bounded over the couch and landed on my bed. I _think_ the first early rays of dawn had started to warm the sky, but was pretty much oblivious to it as I dropped my transformation, and then further dropped into the warm embrace of dreamless slumber.

Somewhere around midday, Nathalie poked her head into my room and gently woke me up. I must have looked as bad as I felt when I lifted my tangled head of hair in her direction and squinted at her. "Whaddya want?" I think I said.

"...lunch?" she asked, possibly for the second time.

I blinked to clear my vision and sat up. "Lunch? What time is it?"

"One o'clock," she replied instantly.

"Yes," I said, feeling the rumble in my stomach. "Let me grab a quick shower first?"

Nathalie nodded and withdrew. I slumped back into the pillow, wondering if I could sneak a few more minutes and then realized I was now fully awake, with no hope of catching anymore shuteye.

The hot water of the shower rejuvenated me further and I trundled down to the dining room in a comfortable pair of sweats to find my solo place setting waiting. I munched away but was not really cognizant of what had been served, my mind very much on trying to figure out how to slip away from the mansion to make my big date that evening. I'd also decided that I would be whisking Ladybug away for an after party on my favorite rooftop, complete with the movie marathon I'd threatened her with.

For some reason, Nathalie hadn't stuck around to observe me, so I had no compunction about slipping a ton of extra Camembert into a napkin and heading upstairs to my sanctuary. Plagg similarly felt no qualms about stealing his own slice before zipping back to his hiding spot in my hoodie. It was a dangerous move, perhaps, but when the cat's away...

Back in my room, I left Plagg making short work of our contraband and headed toward my closet. I knew I'd be Chat Noir at the dance, but it felt oddly appropriate for me (as Adrien) to still dress for the occasion. I picked out one of my favorite suits in all black, a matching white dress shirt to go with it, and a cool tie my mother had given to me a few months before she disappeared.

_That _made me pause slightly. But it also seemed appropriate to have a little bit of her with me tonight.

I paused again, and grabbed a bow tie from the rack as well, then headed toward the second shower of the day. It was sort of a model thing, the desire to be fresh scrubbed when on display – but I also felt like I still had traces of sugar in places they had no business being. After luxuriating in the hot water much longer than was strictly necessary, I carefully dressed and did my hair, tied the tie and shrugged into my jacket.

I did a final turn in front of the mirror to make sure everything looked proper. Plagg took that moment to make an appearance and floated off to my side.

He nodded appreciatively. "Not bad, Adrien. Black really does suit you."

I laughed at the terrible pun. "Thanks, Plagg." I looked at the wristwatch I'd put on – another gift from my mother from a long time ago now. "About ready?"

"No," he said and scurried off for more cheese.

I laughed again and rejoined him in the bedroom, anxious to get going but still just a tad early for my escape. Marinette had invited Chat Noir to her house for dinner prior to the Ball, but that was at four and it was barely two thirty. I had plenty of time to engineer my escape, but also didn't see the harm in getting it implemented early, either.

Since Chat Noir had damaged the intercoms (bummer!), I pulled my phone out of the charging dock and called Nathalie's direct line. She picked up right away. "Hey, Nathalie," I said, sounding as tired as possible.

"Your father will be out until later," she said pre-emptively. "I'm not sure he'll be back for dinner this evening."

"Uh, okay," I said. "That's probably fine – I'm totally beat and with that late lunch will probably just crash early tonight anyway. I've got that big photo shoot tomorrow and I need to get these puffy eyes down a bit."

I knew she was mentally seeing me lying in bed with cucumbers on my face (yes, I've done that before) and making a calculation. I pre-empted her this time. "I'll be fine, Nathalie. Why don't you call it day?"

"Very good." She clicked off.

I put the phone into my inner jacket pocket. "That was easy," I commented as I finished packing my tablet into my school bag, added the bowtie and the corsage I managed to sneak into the house earlier in the week, paused to retrieve one other special item, and then zipped it shut. I looked back at Plagg, who was flat on his back on the coffee table, staring a slice of Camembert with bedroom eyes. "Ten second warning," I called out.

He looked startled and bolted the cheese in one gulp, the floated over to me. "_Now _I'm ready," he said.

I held out my ring. "Plagg - claws out!"

The green flash transformed me into Chat Noir in short order. I slung the backpack over a shoulder and bounded through the open bedroom window, over the fence and into the afternoon. I made it far too quickly to my favorite rooftop, and stashed the bag in my hidden nook, but not before getting out the bowtie and carefully accessorizing my bell with it.

I was still hopelessly early, and tried to kill time by watching the activity on the river, counting birds as they flew by, and playing several rounds of solitaire on my tablet. By three-fifteen I was antsy enough that I gave up any pretense of patience, double checked my bowtie with the camera on the baton phone, and continued on toward the Bakery. I dropped down to the residence entrance just to the side, arriving a hair after three-thirty.

Rapping on the door with one knuckle, I was soon met by Marinette herself, hair pinned up into the same style she'd used earlier this morning, but still clad in weekend loungewear. "Chat!" she said. "You're early!"

"You're surprised?" I whispered as I leaned in to steal a kiss. She deftly fended me off with a quick shake of the head; her parents were in the hallway and both had phones trained on us. I altered course and planted a platonic kiss on each cheek. "Purrrincess," I said warmly, bowing.

"I like the bow tie," she said affectionately. "It reminds me of someone else I know."

My eyes reflected the smile I had. "I thought it might."

"Come in, Chat," she said, taking me by the paw and leading me into the house. "Dinner's actually ready," she said as we stopped in the kitchen. "You're sitting there," she said, pointing to a spot that appeared to be between her and her mother. Her father had already settled into a spot opposite.

I raised a masked eyebrow. "You did expect me early," I smiled.

"Your reputation, uh, precedes you," she laughed.

Just to be clear, I'd been on plenty of dates with Ladybug by this point, but this was the first time I'd been on an official date with Marinette (in either guise). It was also the first time I'd had the dubious honor of sharing a meal with my date's parents, which would be a trial under normal circumstances for any teenage boy.

I had the added handicap of also having to stay in character as one of Paris's two superheroes, in full costume no less. How I managed to not scratch anyone while passing the serving dishes around the table I will never know; I did manage to snag a claw in one of Madame Dupain-Chang's fine napkins, though, leading to a nasty tear and my near-inadvertent slip in character: "I'm so sorry – I'll have Fat- I mean, I can replace this, Madame."

"Don't worry, young man," she said as she gently pulled the napkin off of the claw where I'd gotten it hopeless entangled. "Easily fixed."

My inflamed cheeks expressed just how embarrassed I was, but I managed to make it through dessert without wrecking anything else and a modicum of decorum. Marinette excused herself to finish dressing, leaving me on the couch between her parents, idly holding the corsage I'd brought for her. The silence had stretched so long that I was starting to hope for the sudden appearance of an akuma just to break the tension.

"So," her father started the interrogation, "how exactly do you know Marinette again?"

"We go to – I mean, Ladybug and I have come to rely on her assistance when we run into a thorny problem we can't solve," I said, quickly trying to correct my near flub.

_This might actually be going worse that I think..._

"Ah," her mom said. "That's why you're here so often," she smiled at me.

"Not _that _often," I said, perhaps a tad too quickly. She smiled wider. "I mean, you know, when the occasion merits... maybe a few times a month..." I trailed off, eyes wandering hopefully to the staircase and salvation from Marinette.

"Try a few times a week," her father corrected.

My eyes snapped back. "Is it that frequent?" I said tentatively, reaching to scratch the back of my neck. I saw flicker of recognition in Madame's eyes and redirected to scratch behind an ear.

_Whoops. Please hurry, Marinette,_ I thought. _Take too much longer and they'll have this cat singing like a bird..._

"Well, Hawkmoth certainly has kept us pretty busy." I went for the disarming Chat smile and tried to fold my hands without crushing the flower in my burgeoning panic.

"And you know Adrien, too?" her father asked.

"Uh, well, yes," I said, also way too quickly. "Not like, _well_, of course, but we run into him, too."

"And he's okay with you stealing his date tonight?" he continued.

_Oh my GOD! I handled my very angry Father better and in more dire circumstances than these two._

"Okay? Hah, that would be a stretch," I laughed as much as I could.

"So you _have _talked to him about this, then?"

I started to seriously consider calling up Cataclysm and dropping myself into a deep, deep hole to get away from the mess I was creating. "Look," I said, my cheeks inflamed to a dark scarlet red, "I'm actually dating someone else –"

The look on her mother's face told me _that _was not the way out.

"I mean, Adrien _knows_ that, which is why he asked me to take care of Marinette tonight," I blurted out.

"He did?" Madame asked.

"Yes," I said, which was true as far as it went. "His father essentially has him under house arrest, which is embarrassing for a model of his stature," I continued, which again was true. "I didn't want to reveal that, especially to Marinette, so if we could…?" I trailed off.

Both parents eyes had gone wide, making me think I'd finally hit on an explanation that worked. They nodded in unison just as my feline ears heard Marinette starting down the staircase.

_Thank the stars, _I breathed and turned to see Marinette once again in that stunning dress. I stood and moved over to the base of the stairway, holding out my hand to take hers as she made it to our level. "Mi—Princess," I corrected, "you look stunning."

"Thank you, Chat," she said, taking my hand and walking toward the center of the room. I retrieved the corsage from the couch, still surprisingly intact, and carefully pinned it where she indicated, managing not to snag the fabric of her dress with a claw. I must have looked pretty intense, as Marinette quietly squeezed my arm and whispered, "Hang in there, kitty."

Photos were taken – more than any photo shoot I'd done in recent memory, actually – and then we were finally free of her parents and soaring through the night toward the Grand Hotel. She snuggled into my chest, heels in her hands on my back as I gently moved over the rooftops and carefully slid down the extended baton in front of the main entrance. Once again, she balanced on my shoulder as she slid her heels on, and then, together, we entered the fray.

I'm not a stranger to attention. Years of high-profile modelling had made my alter ego wildly famous, and Chat Noir had attracted his own share of attention since bursting onto the scene with Ladybug. Still, even I wasn't ready for the hush that fell across the main ballroom when we entered along the red carpet. Every head turned in our direction and watched us as I escorted Ladybug – eerp, I mean Marinette – toward the dance floor.

I figured the safest course was to get right to it. "May I have this dance, Princess?" I asked, holding out my gloved hand to her once we reached the floor. I could hear the hundreds of phones clicking away.

"Yes, Chat," she smiled, taking my hand.

Part of my early training for modelling included learning classic ballroom dance maneuvers, which I gleefully used to smoothly whisk Marinette across the floor and put shame to the shimmying my classmates were trying to pass off as "moves." Her eyes widened as I swirled and swooped and spun her gently to the rhythm of whatever the full band was playing, be it fast or slow. And, for once, she accepted _my_ lead, which was a novel sensation to be sure.

I'm not certain how long we'd been on the floor before the band finally broke for a break, and we worked out way through the crowd to find a place to sit. Oddly, after the initial shock of my appearance, the crowd seemed ambivalent about having a masked superhero in their midst and had started to treat me as just another teenager at the Ball. I tried not to smile at the thought.

We found Ayla and Nino in the corner, saving a pair of seats for us. They were both wearing wide grins, and Ayla was having trouble disguising the fact she'd filmed the entire set.

"I'm glad the band finally stopped," Marinette said, breathing slightly hard as she dropped into the seat next to me and kicked off her heels. "Chat doesn't realize _normal _people don't have the same stamina as certain superheroes. And these things are insanely uncomfortable."

"My apologies, Princess," I said genuinely. It hadn't even occurred to me that I'd be able to go on all night, powered by Plagg. "You should have said something sooner."

She smiled up at me. "You were having fun," she said simply. "I know you don't get that chance very often," she continued, speaking more to Adrien than Chat, "and I wanted you to enjoy it while you could."

My eyes widened. "Thank you, Princess," I said warmly. "That means more to me than you can ever know."

Nino leaned over. "I'm glad you made it, Chat," he said, winking meaningfully.

"Me too, Nino." I turned back to Marinette, who was squeezing my paw in the most adorable way. "Me, too."

* * *

Just for the record, I did let Michael cut in for _two _slow dances. But not without keeping my wide green eyes focused like a laser on his movements. I tried to convince myself it was due to the events earlier in the day, and not my everlasting insecurities surrounding my place in Ladybug/Marinette's heart.

We stayed until the band broke for its last break before playing out the end of the Ball, and then made a tactical retreat for my after party on our special rooftop overlooking Notre Dame and the river. I'd put out the candles and the rose petals before heading to the Bakery, but Marinette helped fluff the pillows while I finished getting the tablet ready. While I fiddled getting the movie going, I heard Marinette mumble something and then saw indirectly the red flash of her transformation. I turned, a quizzical look on my face, to find Ladybug casually sitting on her traditional pillow, holding a tiny box in her hands.

"Milady," I said as I folded into Cat Stance next to her. "I didn't expect you to do that tonight."

"No," she said, "but somehow, it feels appropriate." She reached over and pulled me close, and then handed me the box. "Go ahead, Chat. Open it."

"In just a moment," I said gently, as I reached around to find _my _little box that I'd put into the backpack earlier. "You open this first."

A masked eyebrow went up, but for once, she did as I asked. "Oh, Chat," she breathed, as she pulled out the pendant I had carefully ordered from my family's jeweler.

"That was supposed to be yours tonight, to commemorate our first official date together," I said warmly, hugging her close. "I picked it out myself."

Ladybug was smiling widely as she examined the pendant. I'd chosen a tasteful gold chain that I knew would flatter her neck; hanging at the bottom was a small, stylized Art Deco version of Le Chat Noir. "I love it," she gushed uncharacteristically, then looked back at me. "Don't you think it's a bit obvious though?"

I smiled. "I thought about that," I said, "but a wise little someone once told me that people are blind. No one will make the connection between you, Chat Noir and Ladybug." I ran a finger along her cheek. "Except your parents," I amended. "They could make the most hardened prisoner talk…"

She laughed, then kissed me deeply. "Now, open yours."

I pulled the cover off the small box she'd handed me and pulled away tissue paper to find a small ring box. Raising a masked eyebrow, I opened the second box and found a small ring in the style of a Celtic love knot. The pattern was beautiful in its own right, but my enhanced vision immediately spied the tiny ladybug motif that had been woven in where the traditional cross normally appeared. I turned back to her. "This is gorgeous," I said effusively. "Where did you find it?"

"Find it?" she laughed. "I had my grandmother _make_ it for me." She pointed to a particular section of the ring, where there was a tiny little reverse twist in the knot. "There's only one designer in all of Paris that can do work like this," she said happily. "And that little detail is her signature."

I was stunned and looked at it again. "It's… it's amazing," I stammered uncharacteristically, then leaned down and kissed her _very _deeply. When we came up for air, I said: "Thank you. I will wear it always," I promised, as I immediately started to slide it onto the empty ring finger on my other hand.

I paused. "Of course, you realize that I will have to wear it here -"

"I know," she said, eyes twinkling. "It's my way to remind the world that you're mine."

There was absolutely no way for me to stop the rumbling purr of contentment as I snuggled my head into hers.

* * *

How she had never seen _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan _was beyond me. But once we were underway, she was enthralled by the mythos of the universe I had been a fan of since as far back as I could remember. She was so into it that she cried when Spock died and begged me to skip the credits so we could get into _Star Trek III: The Search for Spock _just see how the tale ended.

"Now I know where you get all of those corny movie quotes," she whispered as Admiral Kirk started to steal the _Enterprise_.

"Oh," I said, "you only know the half of it."

It was very, very late (or very, very early depending on how you view things) when we finished _Star Trek IV_, and agreed to call it a night at that point. Both of us were yawning wildly and given the fact that we'd slept so little over the last week, and that I was due to be on set for the photo shoot at nine sharp, we quickly packed everything up and stored it away for our next date night.

"Thank you for a very special evening," I said. "The only thing better would have been being there as Adrien."

"No," she said, "this evening was purrfect."

I groaned. "You'd better leave the cat puns to me, milady."

"Of course, kitty," she said fondly. She reached up to kiss me, and I leaned down, closing my eyes.

But her lips were not where I thought they should have been. I kept moving down, but nothing was there. I opened my eyes and found myself on top of the fence at the park, staring down at Stormy Weather and saying: "…why don't you pick on someone your own temperature!"

_Wait a minute, where's Ladybug? _

_Why am I at the park? _

_Didn't we defeat Stormy Weather already?_

I had to blink – Stormy had said something to me, and I hastily tried to remember the encounter we'd had months earlier. Unsure if this was a dream or some sort of hallucination, I tried to play along.

I swung down off the fence and used a hand and foot to carefully slide down the fencepost, twirling my tail as I did so. "Listen," I said with full Chat Noir charisma, "I'm _feline_ more generous than usual today. So cool down and we'll call it quits, 'kay?"

I tried not to brace myself as she spun her umbrella in my direction and blasted me into the air. Exactly as I remembered it, I flew through the air in an ungainly tangle of limbs and dropped into the street a few blocks from the park, ricocheting through a few parked cars to land face first in the street. It hadn't been my finest hour the first time, and this time around wasn't much better.

But… in just a moment…

I heard the _zing!_ of the yo-yo and heard Ladybug land next to me. "I thought cats always landed on their feet," she said, helping me up.

"Thanks, milady," I said, going off script. "What happened? How did we get here? One moment, we're watching _Star Trek_ together, the next-"

"What are you talking about, Chat?" Ladybug said.

"This has to be Hawkmoth," I said, scanning the sky. "I don't know what he's done—"

"Of course it's Hawkmoth," she said, getting exasperated with me. Kind of like she used to in the early days of our partnership. "Now, cut the chatter and let's get to it." She started to bound off toward Stormy.

"Ladybug, wait!" I said to her receding form. She didn't stop, so I leapt to her side. "_Marinette_," I said with emphasis, putting my hands on her shoulders to get her to stop for a moment, "don't you remember? We went to the Ball, had dinner, and I gave you a necklace…" I trailed off, seeing for the first time the Ladybug ring on my gloved finger, right where I had placed it earlier that evening.

_Maybe this isn't a dream. But if it's not…?_

She shook my hands off her shoulders, rigid with anger, and turned to face me. Ladybug's look of shock, mixed in with a liberal dose of irritation was plain on her masked face. "Chat – how the _hell_ do you know who I am?"

_Uh oh._

* * *

**AN: Yes, it is a cliffhanger. The overall story arc felt too long to put into one story, so head over to _Time & Again_ to see what mischief has now been unleashed. (Hint: while you might think Hawkmoth is behind it, it may not be for the reasons you are assuming. More details in the final chapter.)**

**Adrien has also asked me to pass along the specific movies he is quoting/paraphrasing. To wit:**

_**Star Trek II: The Wrath of**_** Khan (1982)**

**\- "And, now, Mister Spock." (Admiral Kirk)**

**\- "I don't believe in the no-win scenario." (Admiral Kirk)**

**_Star Trek III: The Search for Spock_ (1984)**

**\- "The answer is no. I am therefore going anyway." (Admiral Kirk)**

**\- "You Klingon [bleep]! You've killed my son!" (Admiral Kirk)**

**_Star Trek: Insurrection_ (1998)**

**\- "Definitely feeling aggressive tendencies, sir!" (Commander Worf)**


	11. Epilogue

Gabriel Agreste knew he'd made a colossal mistake the moment he walked into Adrien's room.

Except, it wasn't Adrien's room any more.

In fact, there was no trace of anything remotely close to indicating he'd ever had a son. The space was now a warmly decorated breakfast room, with comfortable seating and a well-stocked library on the second floor. Gone were the video games, the sports posters and the debris of teenage life strewn throughout the space.

Even the grand piano was missing, like it had never been needed.

He fingered the brooch hiding beneath his tie. Nooroo had warned him that attempting to use the time spell he'd found in the Miraculous Grimoire to try and foresee how Chat Noir and Ladybug might have tried to stop him in the future could have unintended consequences, and had _specifically_ told him that changes to the timeline were entirely possible.

And potentially unfixable if they occurred.

But he had been blinded by his rage at being bested – _again_ – by two troublemaking teenagers who had no idea what kind of power they actually wielded. He'd needed an edge, and the time spell seemed like a godsend.

He slowly moved out of the bedroom, and down the marble staircase, ignoring the painting that now showed just him, and back into his den, where all traces of both Adrien and his wife were now absent. Nooroo appeared at his shoulder, wary.

"Why is it I recall what was," he asked the kwami, icily.

"Miraculous holders are immune to changes in the timeline," Nooroo answered. "The same cannot be said for everyone else. You alone will now suffer the consequences of your actions."

For the first time in long time, Gabriel found himself crying. "What have I done…?" he asked everyone and no one in particular.

* * *

**AN: Aaaaand that's a wrap for _Sweethearts Ball_. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!**

**As I mentioned in the postscript to Chapter 10, we'll delve into the ramifications of Gabriel's decision in the next part of what is shaping up to be a much longer saga than I'd intended. Look for the first chapter of _Time & Again_ to be posted soon. **


End file.
